Techno-Origami
translation of Haji Khavari
The 3-D printer
worked overtime
sculpting lemon trees
complete with bees
on budding flowers.
The overheated machine
filled the cardboard orchard
with the scent of hot plastic.
The 12th nightingale arrived
like a prophet
in a cloud of smoke,
considering the same hand
that pushed “print”
remained destined to strike
a single match
and wave goodbye
to a paradise
of paper.
Copyright © 2016 Roger Sedarat. Originally published in Poetry, August 2016). Reprinted with permission of the poet.
Roger Sedarat
Roger Sedarat is an Iranian American poet, scholar, and translator. A recipient of the Willis Barnstone Prize in Translation, his works include the translated poetry collection These Garden Nights: Ghazals of Hafez, which is forthcoming, and the academic study Nature and Nostalgia in the Poetry of Nader Naderpour (Cambria Press, 2017), cowritten with Rouhollah Zarei.