The difference between Clown and Crown
is only that r—
erect—
become l.
O old clown,
you who, without Viagra,
cannot even stiffen
your own spine!
A royal crown
belongs only
to madness.
You are deaf.
You are blind.
You are thirsty.
But you are not mad.
With that drug of power,
that magical Viagra,
you even erected
lies.
You made religion
a ladder,
and climbed
its rotten steps
without once looking
at the firm ground.
And when you ascended
to the seventh heaven
of tyranny1,
it was not fear—
but astonishment
at meeting
the void.
I am not the one
who will pull the ladder
from beneath
your weary feet.
I will not, like Sohrab2,
build a boat,
nor cast it
into the water.
I do not want
his pond
of the present3.
Now
the present
is a river—
the very river
Heraclitus4
stepped into.
I am of the descendants
of fire5—
of the burning blood
of Zarathustra,
and the inheritance
of the civilization
of Cyrus.
I will build a fire—
a fire
whose smoke alone
is enough
for your blind eyes.
From Poems of Madness
“the seventh heaven of tyranny” / ascension alludes to the well-known religious motif of the ascension to the seventh heaven. In Islamic tradition this appears in the narrative of the Mi‘raj (the Prophet Muhammad’s ascent through the heavens), where the prophet passes through several celestial spheres until reaching the highest heaven. Similar layered heavens also appear in earlier Abrahamic traditions, including Jewish and Christian cosmology, where the “seventh heaven” symbolizes the highest celestial realm. Here the image is used ironically, transforming a sacred ascent into an ascent through layers of tyranny.
¹ Sohrab refers to Sohrab Sepehri (1928–1980), a contemporary Iranian poet and painter. The line alludes to a famous verse from his poetry: “I will build a boat, I will cast it into the water.” In Sepehri’s work this image suggests a quiet departure from the turmoil of the world and a contemplative drifting with existence.
“the pond of the present” refers to another well-known line by Sohrab Sepehri: “Life is bathing in the pond of the present moment.” The image represents a calm immersion in the immediacy of the present.
Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BCE), the Greek philosopher associated with the doctrine of perpetual change. The line alludes to his famous fragment often paraphrased as: “No one ever steps into the same river twice.”
Fire carries a double allusion. In the Iranian religious tradition of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), fire is not worshipped as a god but revered as a visible symbol of truth, purity, and the cosmic order (Asha). At the same time, the image also echoes Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, whose prophetic voice repeatedly invokes fire as a force of transformation and the destruction of idols. In the preface to this book, the poet explicitly declares Friedrich Nietzsche as his “true father”, and the invocation of fire therefore also gestures toward that lineage. The fire in this poem thus stands at the intersection of these two traditions: the sacred fire of ancient Iran and the incendiary, value-breaking fire associated with Nietzsche’s thought.