The Palace of Forty Pillars
A Poem by Armen Davoudian
Following The Unnamable’s interview with Armen Davoudian, I’m pleased to share the title poem of his collection-in-progress, The Palace of Forty Pillars. The poem was originally published in The Sewanee Review, in 2019.
— Ben
The Palace of Forty Pillars
اصفهان نصف جهان Isfahan is half the world Twenty pillars drip into the pool their likenesses, where the likeness of a boy wavers among the clouds, eyeing the boy who’s waiting for another. All is dual: two rows of roses frame the pool, in twos the swans glide, each on another’s breast, then fuse in a headless embrace. All is dissolved: the boy outside the water is no more a boy inside the water—his no more the face defaced by its own lines on shattered waves overlapping like a rose, the tattered pillars strewn like petals. All is halved, severed, like home and school, like love and being loved—the boy no more than a way of seeing.