Reflection (agnes b. +)
Shadow

Letters, letters. Words, words. Sentences, sentences.... Sentences repeated. Sentences repeated into a rhythm, a continuous rhythm creating a meaning in our minds, a meaning that spreads and spreads ... Letters, words, a sentence: Let's not muddy the waters. Let's not muddy the waters, let's not.... But this is not enough, the several syllables of "Let's not muddy thewaters" are not enough. Why not? Because the meaning of the sentence is not yet complete. It has started with a detail, that of the "waters", but it has not reached the culmination of its meaning. Why the waters should not be muddied needs clarification. Because: perhaps a dove is drinking water downstream. The poet, thus, starts from a detail to get through to a complete human concept. Let us not muddy the waters because a dove is drinking downstream; we, as humans, are responsible for keeping the waters pure and clean.

Now, if the artist wants to start from a detail and reach a human concept in the totality of her work, what should she do to get the perfect inscription? She starts from letters, proceeds to words and then to sentences, pauses at the rhythms and meanings, and transforms the repetition of meanings, through the rhythms, into a recitation, a recitation in her mind, on her lips. So the deeper she inscribes the meanings and the rhythms in the letters and in the words, the more her forms dance to the music of her meanings and rhythms – and that is a poem, a poem in form. But, the work is yet incomplete, because the forms are still to be reflected, reflected over the walls. There needs to be shadows, shadows that are by nature ephemeral, passing us by like the flowing waters or like the ephemeral shadow of a narcissus over the flowing waters. Where are the waters taking the flower? That we should ask from the waters ...

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi