The Promised Land Read online

Ferdowsi had written sixty thousand of them …

  Unfortunately, Sultan Mahmoud was dejected:

  the long years of peace were proving hard to bear

  without the rich, gluey feel of blood on his hands.

  He sent the poet home with a mere sack of silver.

  Years later, as the Sultan was about to ride into battle,

  a minister recited a sad song of singular beauty.

  When the Sultan learned Ferdowsi was its author,

  he immediately sent him a caravan laden with gold;

  but as the caravan entered the city through one gate,

  Ferdowsi’s remains were being wheeled out the other.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to Donald Futers at Penguin for guiding this book to life. I am also grateful to Jin Auh and Alba Ziegler-Bailey at the Wylie Agency for their support. I would like to extend my gratitude to the editors of the following publications, where some of the poems in this book first appeared: Ambit, Areté, Night & Day, PN Review, Poetry London, Swimmers, The Warwick Review, The Yellow Nib and World Literature Today. Thanks are also due to the editors of the following anthologies: New Poetries VI (Carcanet, 2015), The Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt), Oxford Poets Anthology 2013 (Carcanet) and Days of Roses II (2012). ‘The Other Achilles’ was awarded the G. S. Fraser Poetry Prize in 2010. I am grateful to the MacDowell Colony, where I assembled this manuscript in spring 2014. I am indebted to David Harsent and Declan Ryan for their kindness and unwavering support. This book also owes its existence to my teachers and mentors, both formal and informal: Nick Everett, Don Paterson, Sarah Maguire, Mark Ford and Jamie McKendrick. Special thanks to Aamer Hussein, Michael Schmidt, Robert Selby and Malene Engelund.

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published 2017

  Copyright © André Naffis-Sahely, 2017

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Rick Senley/Millennium Images, UK

  ISBN: 978-0-141-98494-0