The Wholeness
Alireza Bemanian • Odyssey
تا به مستوفِ عذارش جثه در، مکنون منش حنانه نیست
Chapter IV: Propensities and Guides — epigraph
The wholeness, totality, and fullness,
exhibit the tantrums, paroxysms, frenzies,
merely to include, encompass, surmise, and comprise.
The absolutism, the attainable disposition and tyranny,
despotism, cruelty, and domination,
spin, whirl, and swirl, not aware to dare the agony,
conferred and allotted choices,
are they weighed and depicted, or a coincidental ceremony.
Selections, the autonomous elixirs and tinctures,
The accountabilities to hurtle, obligations to prevail,
presented and awaited, loomed and revealed,
the breeze hurls to seize, to get engaged, and release.
The wholeness, fullness, inclusion and surmise,
the paths do not smear, not to tarnish,
the surges and seals to weave the net, the mesh to heal,
forging along, shaping the ties, unfold and reach.
Elixir of verve, vitality, bonds and concerns,
the ties and links, the tinkered and fiddled ordeals,
are they prompts, prods, and goads,
or, wondered debris, to fuss, fret, and conceal.
Summits, acmes, and the peaks,
the orbits, ambits, evoked orders and deeds,
circle, revolve, even if barren seas,
patterns, samples, the sunken seeds,
still, the height, apex, accommodate the pertained feat.
Serenity and tranquilities, the maze of edicts and mandates,
evolve, consolidate, exert and wield,
handle and carry, to announce and heed,
reciprocation, exchange and share,
carry the mantle, not to saddle the lonely wills.
The decrees and rebounds, shall attain and reach,
to seek and foresee, to perceive the needs,
the gusts, flurries, abandoned lonely leaves,
toting and ring, salute the puffs, bustles, rushes and stirs,
Wholeness, fullness, and breath,
inhale the urge, pursue the thud,
echo and hum, grasp, request and bid,
the maze of prudence, realm of perception,
roll and revolve, move and troll.
Convolute, reticulate, and interweave.
Decrees, reflections, rumbles and roars,
the force and vigor, the might and potency,
reiterations, confirmations and echoes, to join and link.
Prevail and reign, aberrations and ordeals,
the gusts and winds, pertain and tame,
durations and lengths, varnish or stain,
convince or defy, persuasions not leaned to deny
the dawn and rainbows, the pure gestures, follow the leads.
Alireza Bemanian • January 8, 2026 • © www.bemanian.com
Themes & Interpretations
The Triple-Noun Architecture
Nearly every line of consequence deploys three nouns, verbs, or phrases in syntactic parallel — performing the poem’s argument structurally. Three-part clustering enacts wholeness: no single term suffices; the third completes a circuit of meaning that a pair cannot achieve.
The Double Question
Two parallel questions suspend the poem’s center: are choices weighed or coincidental ceremony; are bonds prompts or wondered debris. Both are held open, unanswerable from within the system they describe. The holding, not the resolution, is the intellectual act.
Summit as Container
“The height, apex, accommodate the pertained feat” reframes achievement entirely. The summit does not reward or crown — it accommodates, makes room for what belongs there. Achievement is fidelity to the path, not conquest of the peak.
The Ethics of the Mantle
“Carry the mantle, not to saddle the lonely wills” states the poem’s most urgent human claim: the imperative of wholeness must be internally assumed, not distributed as burden onto those already singular and isolated. Wholeness that crushes individuality is tyranny in a new form.
Breath and the Dawn
At stanza 9, “breath” enters the conceptual trilogy — wholeness must be inhaled, the argument must be physiological. The poem closes not in command but in following: “the pure gestures, follow the leads.” The dawn and rainbows are not denied. The final gesture is attentive responsiveness.