The Price of Words

The book The Price of Words is a selection of Abdoljabbar Kakaei’s poems. Poetry is one of the ways emotions are conveyed. To express the truth of his feelings and emotions, a poet needs a language that distances him from the coldness of everyday conversation and allows his imagination to take on meaning—and poetry is that language. Through poetry, one steps away from the mechanical and hectic routine of daily life and rediscovers the lost part of one’s being. This lost feeling is love, longing, separation, loneliness, and other emotions that poets have expressed in their works for centuries. Kakaei’s poetry is social in nature, a quality that appears most clearly in his ghazals. In these poems, he shows his effort to remain faithful to the early path of modern Iranian ghazal poetry, which was shaped in the first years after the Revolution by Qeysar Aminpour and Seyyed Hassan Hosseini.

In his poetry, he speaks of experiences that embody the ideals and aspirations of the people—of words that people constantly and simply revisit in their subconscious, and which sometimes remind them of enduring regrets. This book emerges from the heart of the Iranian people and speaks of their emotions. The Price of Words is recommended to all enthusiasts of contemporary poetry.

An Excerpt from The Price of Words:

At every seven lines of your cup, it was us,

Even the muezzin on your rooftop—it was us.

O sunlit dawn of the faithful,

The most beautiful greeting to you—it was us.

The minaret bears witness that in this world

The voice that sang your name—it was us.

In the simple arabesque designs,

The painter of your word—it was us.

Behind a thousand years of turmoil,

Your order and your system—it was us.

Both the guardians of your sacred history,

Both the Kaaba and your مقام—it was us.

Ignorance turned desire into deceit,

And the naïve traders of that bargain—it was us.

Alas, wearing vests of self-destruction,

We were engaged in your undoing.

O ever-recurring wave of kindness,

We were your fragile, impermanent history.

They distort your image,

Yet we were your unfinished portrait.