translate a poem

I am very proud of my cousins… I have many cousins (a good thing!), but the ones I’m talking about are about half a generation younger than me. Somehow they have managed to be wiser than what we were, more balanced, better-poised, even though the environment has not been nice to them. Anyway, some of my younger cousins occasionally put tidbits of poems or prose on facebook from themselves or the people they know, and I enjoy reading them… enough to spend a few minutes on a lousy translation :)

_{The original piece was longer, but I’m too lazy to translate all of it… oh, and this is all I know about the author}

”...She gathers around all her regrets
And stuffs them in a worn-out suitcase.
Yearning for one last puff,
inside the walls that have never been home,
she stares into the dominance of silence in the street
and realizes that
she has not left yet,
and realizes
how tired she is even before leaving…

She betrays the waiting suitcase,
sits down,
and drinks the moonlight with the last bitter drops of tea,
and with lungs filled with nothingness,
buries her sobbing head
in the flow of “To-Where”s and “So-What”s.”

of a poem by Sepehri… just because I’m too tired to go to sleep :)

”...
There is something inside
Like a field of light
Or a dream at dawn…
And stirs in me
Such eagerness that
I wish to run
To the mountain top
All across meadows.
There is a voice from afar
That calls for me…”

is titled “Seclusion” by Shamlu (the link contains some translated pieces in different languages; for more information about him and his works, see this or this).

Look at the world,
in its indolent deep sleep,
foreign to itself;

And look at us,
wide awake,
conscious in our own grief.

Us, indignant and annoyed,
looking after our bitter pain;
despondently guarding our suffering
to keep it contained in the frame we have drawn around it.

And look at the world,
the world,
placid in its innocent sleep,
how foreign to itself.

The moon travels
along its cold orbit…
Us, left behind, lingering,
and the dawn never comes.

need to make this a more consistent hobby of mine… another poem from Sohrab (He’s famous for the simplicity of his language, his love of nature, and his strong artistic side… occasionally criticized, on the other hand, for not being politically active enough _{which is true but irrelevant, IMO}).

“It’s time…
to close the book,
to walk along the line of time,
to watch the flower, to listen to the doubt.

It’s time to run through all the existence,
to follow the roots of mortality,
to reach the point where God and trees meet.

It’s time to settle and grow…
somewhere… part in selflessness, part in discovery.”

from Gheysar Aminpour (when we were in college, a couple of my friends took the literature course he offered, I didn’t, and now I wish I had done it too…)

“My pains
are not clothes
to be taken off,
are not poems and songs
to be put into words,
are not cries
to be screamed out.

My pains, unspeakable,
my suffering to be hidden within.

My pains, not like other people’s pains,
they are other people’s pains…

People whose wrinkles of their clothes,
people whose colors of their collars,
people whose names,
whose worn out identifications,
are in pain.

My pain is my whole existence,
my simple poetic moments…
...”

_{I’m not sure if “pain” carries the same concept as it does in the original form. It’s an emotional suffering but has something more in it, “awareness,” perhaps.}

done this in a while, but yesterday one of the great Persian contemporary poets, Gheysar Aminpour, suddenly passed away. I couldn’t find much of his work online, so here is a small piece until I find more:

“God created the village,
and man, the city,
but poets
created Utopia,
unimaginable even in dreams.”

is titled “Stranger,” by Fereydoon Moshiri:

“Hold my hand! The garden of your eyes
so full of flowers, takes me away

Eternal I am, when your kiss, like a swallow
opens the doors of heaven to me

My heart, though, the unresolved
feels stranger, even in heaven.”

Any suggestions/comments/thoughts?

another try… a piece titled “The fall” by Hushang Ebtehaj (aka Sayeh – his pen name, meaning shadow). Just as a heads-up, it’s about a hero-figure that didn’t live up to the expectations. As always, comments/corrections are welcome…

Had he stood up
he would’ve stood high and above all,
the sky with all its stars
kissing his hand,
the coin of sun
in his grasp.

A head-length is at times
far as galaxies,
and from dignity to disgrace
a hair-thin distance.

He bowed his head, and
the sky with all its stars
distanced from his head.

[Edited]

This one is called “I pity the garden”, again from Forough Farrokhzad’s works. It’s composed more than 40 years ago, but still parts of it apply to that neighborhood.

Nobody thinks of flowers
nobody thinks of fish
nobody’s willing to
admit that the garden is dying
and garden’s heart has swollen in the sun
and garden’s mind is gradually
emptying from the memories of the green
and garden’s feeling is
like an object decayed in garden’s seclusion.

Our yard is lonely
our yard =waiting for some rain from a random cloud=
is yawning
and our pond is empty
naive little stars
fall from the height of trees on its dust
and through pale windows of fish’s house
you can hear the coughing at night
our yard is lonely.

Father says:
“I am through
I have taken my load
and done my job.”
And in his room, from dawn to dusk
either reads Shahnameh
or history.
Father says to Mother:
“Damn all the fish and all the birds,
when I die, what matters
whether the garden is there
or it is not
my pension is all I need.”

Mother, all her life,
is a set spot for prayers
at the brink of fear from hell
Mother always in everything
looks for a track of a sin
and thinks that the garden
is poisoned by infidelity of some plant
Mother prays all day long
Mother is a born sinner
and she throws spells at all flowers
and at all fish
and at herself
Mother is waiting for the resurrection
and the forgiveness to come.

My brother calls the garden “grave”
he laughs at the randomness of the weeds
and he counts
the corpses of fish
decaying under the infected skin of water.
My brother is addicted to philosophy
my brother believes that the cure for the garden
is in demolishing it.
He gets drunk
and throws fists at doors and walls
and tries to explain
how sad and tired and hopeless he is
He takes his hopelessness
like his ID, calendar, lighter, and pen
along with him to streets and bazaars
and his hopelessness
is so tiny that every night
it gets lost in the crowd of the bar.

And my sister who befriended the flowers
and who talked her sincere simple thoughts
=when punished by mother=
to their kind and quiet company
and who every now and then
took the family of fish
to a feast of sunshine and candy…
She lives on the other side of the town now
in her artificial house
supported by the love of her artificial husband
and under the shade of artificial apple trees
She sings artificial songs
and gives birth to natural children
She =whenever she comes to visit
and her skirt gets stained with the poverty of the garden=
takes a bath of perfume
She =whenever she comes to visit=
is pregnant.

Our yard is lonely
all day
you can hear the sound of tearing apart
and explosion
All our neighbors grow in their gardens instead of flowers
guns and grenades
All our neighbors
put a cover on their ponds
and the delicate ceramic ponds
against their will
are secret ammunition hides
And the kids in our alleyhave their schoolbags
full of small bombs
Our yard is confused
I am afraid of an era
that has lost its heart
I am scared
of too many hands all misspent
and of too many faces all strangers
I feel lonely like a student
who is deeply in love
with the geometry lessons
and I think we can take gardens to hospitals
I keep thinking
and thinking…
and thinking…
and garden’s heart has swollen in the sun
and garden’s mind is gradually
emptying from the memories of the green.

Well, it was longer than what I expected! Again, please let me know if I missed something, made a mistake, or if you have suggestions :)

My artistic side, if not dead already, is in a very bad shape. I’m going to give this a try, nevertheless, but one thing is for sure: I NEED YOUR HELP!

This is the very first draft of a short piece I took from Forough Farrokhzad’s works . It’s called gift:

“I’m talking of an absolute night,
I’m talking from absolute darkness
in an endless night

You, kind one, if you happen to come to my house
bring the light for me
and a window through which
I can watch the crowd of the happy alley.”

Now, just because I’ve twisted it in translation (and because I feel bad about it), a couple of notes are due:

1. The house refers to her thoughts, night refers to hopelessness, and the name of the piece refers to a housewarming gift
2. On line 5, the direct translation is “lamp”, but the word is more literate in Persian, I guess (I didn’t feel comfortable using the lamp here). Anyway, I’ve used “light” instead, and it stands for something that reveals the truth or gives knowledge
3. On the last line, I’ve used “happy” for a word which its accurate translation in Persian is “fortunate” or “satisfied”

That’s as far as my limited vocabulary and my limping artistic sense took me. I’ll gladly and gratefully take suggestions that you may have.