Dedicated to Iranian-American poet Mahnaz Badihian
Say, how many wings of a dove
Has been broken in this voice?
And how many nights and exiles have trickled on it drop by drop?
That even the smoke of the burnt nests never let my heart alone.
Say, which lovebird, again,
Face to face with its own grave
In line with the mourners,
Has stood to see itself off
That the geometry of death still
Has a strange shape.
Say, which thunder drowns
The bass and treble of this tone
That even the seabirds
Around the tides
Never stop crying?
“I am alone Nosrat, alone”
With the nostalgic scent of the purple flowers
Which beg me for you.”
The voice comes from the other side of the line
With few words dispatching on the roof of this house
The gloomiest clouds in the world
So that the poor poet
Shall be the soloist of the heaviest weep which by now
Has been bucketing over solitudes roof.
Parmida!
I write with my eyes
The melody of this lamentation
So that the shoulders of all the lovers remain drenched
That your solitude and my tears
Become soaked epigraphs
Which shoulder to shoulder go round and round in the Bazaar.
Maybe in an ally a school opens
In which “love” emerges
And the scent of Leyli’s hair and the practice of Majnunn*
Is nothing but an old school .
Parmida!
Tonight, but not tomorrow
When the resurrection’s morning conveys me
I wish to die beside your solitude
In the nostalgic bed of those purple flowers.
…..
*Leyli and Majnunn are the literary equivalent of Romeo and Juliet of Iranian literature.
……
Translated from Farsi by: Maboobeh Zaydi
Edited by:
Mahvand Sadeghi