Enduring Melody

Nastaʿlīq calligraphy laid over a field of Persian carpet and tilework, carrying the well-known verse of the poet Fereydoun Moshiri: life is the one stage of our artistry — each of us sings our own melody and leaves the stage, and the stage remains.

The painting takes its title from the closing line: blessed is the melody that people commit to memory.

The script is not written on the pattern so much as grown out of it. The dark strokes move across the medallion and the floral border like a second, larger arabesque — so that word and ornament become one language, and the eye cannot say where the poem ends and the weave begins.

It is the quietest work in the collection, and the one most directly about what remains after a life: not the singer, but the song.