Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share a special poem from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems of Sohrab Sepehri, translated by Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati.

Bright Existence

Sky, more blue.
Water, even bluer!

I am on the veranda, Rana by the pond in the garden.

She is washing clothes.
Leaves are trickling down.
“What a sad season,” my mother said this morning.
I responded, “Life is an apple best eaten unpeeled.”

Our neighbor weaves at her window, humming a soft tune.
I am reading the Vedas,
sketching pebbles, birds, clouds—

Full sun.
Starlings flock,
nasturtiums burst into blossom.

And me, cracking open a pomegranate I think to myself,
“If only the seeds of the heart could be so transparent,”

when the juice spurts out and splashes into my eyes,
vermilion tears trickling down.

My mother bursts out laughing
and Rana too.