A Verse on Squash for Nowruz

Cucumis sativus
Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé: Flora von Deutschland,
Österreich und der Schweiz (1885)
Via Wikimedia Commons

IN HONOUR of Nowruz, the Zoroastrian feast day which celebrates the beginning of spring, here is an Iranian poem.

It echoes the Aesopian fable which is known in French as "Le chêne et le roseau," in English as "The Oak and the Reed."

But Nasir Khusraw, the 11th-century Iranian poet who was of course not Zoroastrian considering that Islam had replaced that faith, wrote it in qasida verse. It was collected in his Divan.

HAVE you heard? A squash vine grew beneath a towering tree.

In only twenty days it grew and spread and put forth fruit.

Of the tree it asked: 'How old are you? How many years?'

Replied the tree: 'Two hundred it would be, and surely more.'

The squash laughed and said: 'Look, in twenty days, I've done more than you; tell me, why are you so slow?'

The tree responded: 'O little squash, today is not the day of reckoning between the two of us.'

'Tomorrow, when winds of autumn howl down on you and me, then shall it be known for sure which one of us is the real man!'

(Divan, 256)

نشنیده‌ای که زیر چناری کدو بنی بر رست و بردوید برو بر به روز بیست؟

پرسید از آن چنار که تو چند ساله‌ای؟ --- گفتا دویست باشد و اکنون زیادتی است

خندید ازو کدو که من از تو به بیست روز --- بر تر شدم بگو تو که این کاهلی ز چیست

او را چنار گفت که امروز ای کدو --- با تو مرا هنوز نه هنگام داوری است

فردا که بر من و تو وزد باد مهرگان ---

N.B.: The diction of the translation drives me a bit nuts, but de gustibus.

"Squash" is a noisome word in this context because it often refers to species which were imported to the 'Old World' from the Americas during the western Renaissance period; in fact the very word is derived from Narragansett according to the ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary on the table beside me. A German translation I came across has کدو = kadú = pumpkin, but 'gourd' might be accurate, too.

***

"Nasir Khusraw: A Portrait of the Persian Poet, Traveller and Philosopher" [Institute of Ismaili Studies], by Dr Alice C Hunsberger
"Nasir Khusraw" [Wikipedia]

[Edited for brevity and style, August 2023]