The poems in Hamid Tehrani's Only the Blue, speak of identity and journey, darkness and light. An old man questions death, a restless eye flies out of its socket to seek truth, and the unwanted Arab navigates a hostile terrain of alienation and fear. Both a trenchant critique of socio-political realities and a testimonial of hope, these poems speak present truths that need to be heard. The poems of Only the Blue grow out of the deepest mystic tradition of existential Islam known as Sufism.