The Sunflower - Ah! Sunflower

Here are two short poems about sunflower; one called "The Sunflower" by Dr. Mohammad Reza Shafi'i Kadkani, an Iranian contemporary poet and the other called “Ah! Sunflower” by William Blake, an English poet in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In the Persian poetry, the sunflower is a metaphor for a person seeking to reach heaven, God, and wants to go to heaven, to be annihilated in the Sun God. So the sunflower is following the sun everyday and looking toward the sun, toward the heavens.

گل آفتابگردان

گل آفتابگردان و نماز آفتابش
به شب و به ابر و ظلمت،
نشود دمی بر او گم
دل اوست قبله یابش

Translated into English:
The sunflower - Shafi'i Kadkani

The sunflower and its sun prayer,
At night and in the cloud and darkness,
It is not lost a moment
Its heart is its Qiblah finder.

* Qiblah is the direction to which Muslims turn in praying.

William Blake's "Ah! Sunflower" is about mankind's yearning for the eternal. Blake uses the sunflower as a metaphor for a person who is trying to attain eternity. The sun flower is counting “the steps of the sun”, which means the mankind is looking at the passing of time and counting the days of life to reach the completion of life, and desiring to go to “sweet golden clime” where the "journey is done" which can be interpreted as the life after death, the heaven.

Ah! Sunflower - William Blake

Ah! Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

ترجمه به فارسی:
آه! گل آفتابگردان

آه! گل آفتابگردان ، خسته از زمان ،
که گام های خورشید را می شماری
به دنبال آن سرزمین خوب طلایی می گردی
جایی که سفر مسافران به پایان رسیده است ؛
جایی که جوانی که آرزوهایش بر باد رفته
وباکره ی رنگ پریده ای که در برف دفن شده
از گورهایشان برمی خیزند، و آرزو داری
جایی که گل آفتابگردان من آرزو دارد برود