From Translator's Note:

In translating this selection of poems, at times I felt as if I am walking a third, thus illegitimate, path other than those endorsed by Borges, namely, literal and recreation. Mohsen’s poems are generally not categorized as visual due to his fascination with form and rhythm. If they were, I would have probably had no choice other than to recreate. But despite painting images being a rarity, his playful ways with words pull the reader’s mind in different, often opposite, directions—“centrifugal, centripetal” as William Carlos Williams suggests—thereby opening singular spaces that cannot be quickly filled with the next thought or image, as if leaving a lasting bas relief of amazement. It is for this reason that Borges’s paradox could perhaps be avoided without the need to dismantle and dissect the poems through recreation. There was certainly no shortage of opportunities to create beautiful strangeness and stunning singularities by being literal. But to my delight, Mohsen’s special playfulness with form allowed for the occasional reach to stain my brush with familiar hues on the palette of recreating context.

From the Introduction:

Many of the diverging and multipolar aspects of the society he lived in are evident in his poems—melancholy, ruined hopes, broken hearts, social defeat and ever-present shadow of poverty and desolation. Perhaps it is the presence of these or similar themes, common in many regions, that has made Mohsen’s works relatable by many of his generation in other parts of the world.