Mohammad Bamm and his poetry are well known to Persian-speaking audiences, notably followers of the "postmodern ghazal". It may seem strange that his first book is published in a bilingual version with a French translation, thousands of kilometres from his native country. Translating poetry into another language, although it can link two cultures and attract audiences from around the world, is often an exceedingly difficult exercise. If the poet, the translator and the text cannot establish the necessary communication, owing to a loss of linguistic abilities and techniques, an inability to transfer textual references to cultural and historical events, a loss of verbal music or readers' difficulty in understanding because of cultural differences, the result will be less meaningful and the translated work cannot be fully received. The postmodern ghazal has rhythmic forms, and in Persian it is hard to respect rhythms and rhymes in translation; its works are also riddled with word games and indigenous and cultural references, generally lost in translation or requiring many footnotes to convey their full potential. Text by Mehdi Mousavi.