20 Aban 1404
Quatrain 4 of 75
“Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.”
Reflection · Autumn 1404
The verse is written for Nowruz — for the spring moment — and reading it in autumn creates a beautiful ache, the way hearing a song from a particular summer makes you briefly live in two times at once. The New Year revived its old desires in Farvardin. Now the year is in Mehr, the leaves are releasing, and the White Hand on the Bough has long since turned to fruit and then to bare branch again.
The thoughtful soul retires to solitude in autumn too — spring solitude is seeking, autumn solitude is reckoning. You sit with the year you have actually lived rather than the year you imagined in the first days of Farvardin. Jesus from the Ground has suspired and grown and fruited and is now releasing its leaves one by one. The ground will receive them. They will become next spring's old desires, reviving.