Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

  And this decrepit woman seated on my left, knitting incessantly

  row after row,

  the needle and her fingers bobbing up and down through salt and snow.

  I turn toward the empty station where no one welcomes or waves

  good-bye,

  and the illusion of time is riddled with patches of outlandish

  woods —

  a white expanse pierced here and there, perhaps by a reed or a spear.

  A temptation sparks my head, shines on my soul full force

  in a dream seen on that side,

  and a hand clips the edges of the dream with a pair of scissors.

  Yet, as I close my eyes

  I see on the blank page that her eyelids come together.

  Sleep glitters from the depths of frozen lakes,

  and the wind slaps her face every time it reappears through the salt

  to mingle with the children

  who have turned the icy surface into a festive playground,

  a dance spiraling to the crystalline depth, to the noon of night

  on the other side.

  How has that figure remained afloat, with that inviting gaze?

  Is it perhaps that everything lost on the other side

  emerges here from the mouth of the ice,

  witnesses the earth,

  with its shining, shriveled face,

  with earrings that glow, reflecting the scar on the corner of the

  mouth,

  measuring the age of the scream in loneliness,

  carving out a common fate all the way to this passenger heard by none

  in a dream seen on the other side?

  I should have paused as my lips stiffened,

  this new cold hurts my right arm too.

  Or, perhaps this restive blankness has tamed me.

  It is as if something is freezing, or turning into salt, again.

  Here nobody’s gaze is clear.

  For the visit, I must preserve my old eyes

  and retract the dream to the point where it would wind down.

  A white illusion runs over the body,

  and at times a greenish black passes through the veins,

  and the sights that rush in suddenly

  turn seeing into a horrid thing,

  even as they increase the temptation to look

  over the expanse of this landscape dotted by white oaks,

  or mummies

  or faces of crystalline ice

  or bodies of crystal salt,

  all tugging at your eye to transform them.

  And this decrepit woman who is knitting her soul incessantly —

  and gazes only forward —

  does she see what she is staring at? Can she see at all?

  Outside this window there’s a glance

  that has spread the darkness of its dawn

  over the light of this afternoon.

  It shines on my right hand as it feels more and more numb,

  and the shadows of my moving hand settle on the paper.

  How much did I need to write for my eye to rest?

  How wide did I need to open my eye for her to open hers, again?

  And this decrepit woman is now stuck to the window . . .

  My eyelids come together, my hand rests on the “t” in the word “yet.”

  And the snow must be falling, still horizontally,

  against the window of the train, where it is dark by now.

  — Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

  Shams Langerudi

  Shams Langerudi was born in 1951 in Langerud, a city on the coast of the Caspian Sea. He graduated with degrees in mathematics and economics and has worked as a teacher, journalist, and editor. He has published six collections of poetry, including Notes for a Warden Nightingale and The Hidden Celebration, a novel, a play, and an anthology of Iranian poetry. His very important work, a four-volume history of modern Iranian poetry, entitled Analytical History of the New Poetry, had been banned in Iran at one time, but is now in print there.

  REQUIEM

  I have come this long way

  to see you.

  I have seen the plowed land.

  I have seen broken mud-bricks

  and the half-hidden moon.

  I have seen children astonished

  and grass trampled.

  I have seen shadows cast by soil

  and flames arising from sighs.

  I have seen the wind

  but not you.

  — Translated by Lotfali Khonji

  BRANDS

  Fiery brands, cooled,

  burn even more.1

  Poets!

  Never did I wish to see you vagrant

  among the flies

  or in the United Nations’ stained robes.

  Never did I want your pens to disappear in the locusts’ frenzied storm. But bread

  was not a pretty word just for the page,

  and freedom was not entrusted to people by birds.

  Fiery brands, cooled,

  burn even more.

  Forgive us ancient poets!

  Butterflies

  have become spies in candle factories,

  and sheep’s eyes on the eve of slaughter

  no longer speak.

  Forgive us, Salahuddin!2

  Believe me, we imagined the Crusades ended,

  that we had buried you in dust.

  And you too, you

  who do not know bombing games,

  germ dolls or chemical smiles;

  Swords are found only in museums.

  Arise from your graves,

  O Afghan girls!

  I know you are starved,

  and your tired eyes, almond-shaped, do not calm your hunger.

  You are thirsty,

  and salty tears

  only heighten your thirst.

  Arise from your graves!

  How readily you have succumbed

  to slumber in your tiny tombs.

  Fiery brands, cooled,

  burn even more.

  Oh, naked breeze who barefoot treads on bombs,

  revere the sanctity of the dawn just past.

  Amen.

  You small winged dogs who bark in the skies,

  guard Christ’s lambs from the evils

  of the scorched barefoot ones.

  Amen.

  O harlots of the Gulf!

  You whom the world’s banks have enriched,

  shelter the children robbed of childhood.

  Amen.

  And O newspapers!

  Let be the eternal weavers of dreams

  in their small parcels of freedom.

  Let them

  make pens from bird feathers,

  compose fragile poems about

  angels, angels who have crashed to the ground

  from hunger, and now stand on street corners

  peddling cigarettes.

  — Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

  Footnotes

  1 In this stanza the poet uses the word dagh, which has several meanings: extreme heat, to scar, brand, or remorse. He couples this with the word sard, which means cold and also indifferent and nonchalant. He then claims that these words together can burn or hurt even more when combined. The word for scorch or burning, soozan, also means to hurt.

  2 Known in the West as Saladin, Salahuddin Ayyubi was a Kurdish general who united the Muslim forces and recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the twelfth century.

  Partow Nuriala

  Partow Nuriala, a poet and literary critic, earned a bachelors degree in philosophy from Tehran University and a master of science degree from the University of Social Work in Tehran in 1978. She taught philosophy and worked as a social worker at Tehran University, but was forced to stop teaching by the Islamic regime. Later, with the help of two female friends, she opened Damavand Publications in Tehran, thus becoming one of the first independent female publishers in Iran. Within three years, the authoriti
es shut down the press. In 1986, she and her two children came to the United States and began a new life in Los Angeles. Since 1988 she has worked in the Los Angeles County Superior Court (Jury Division) as a deputy jury commissioner while continuing an active literary career.

  Nuriala has published four books of poems, numerous literary and cinematic reviews, a collection of short stories, and a play.

  I AM HUMAN

  Bow your form

  in sight of the earth.

  Hide your face

  from the light

  of the sun and moon,

  for you are a woman.

  Bury your body’s blossoming

  in the pit of time.

  Consign the renegade strands of your hair

  to the ashes in the wood stove,

  and the fiery power of your hands

  to scrubbing and sweeping the home,

  for you are a woman.

  Kill your word’s wit:

  ruin it

  with silence.

  Feel shame for your desires

  and grant your enchanted soul

  to the patience of the wind,

  for you are a woman.

  Deny yourself,

  that your lord

  may ride in you

  at his pleasure,

  for you are a woman.

  I cry

  I cry

  in a land where ignorant kindness

  cuts deeper

  than the cruelty of knowledge.

  I weep for my birth

  as a woman.

  I fight

  I fight

  in a land where

  the zeal of manliness

  bellows in the field between home and grave.

  I fight my birth

  as a woman.

  I keep my eyes wide open

  so as not to sink

  under the weight

  of this dream that others

  have dreamed for me,

  and I rip apart

  this shirt of fear

  they have sewn to cover

  my naked thought,

  for I am a woman.

  I make love to the god of war

  to bury

  the ancient sword of his anger.

  I make war on the dark god

  that the light of my name

  may shine,

  for I am a woman.

  With love in one hand,

  labor in the other,

  I fashion the world

  on the ground of my glorious brilliance,

  and into a bed

  of clouds I tuck

  the scent of my smile,

  that the sweet smelling rain

  may bring to blossom

  all the loves of the world,

  for I am a woman.

  My children I bring

  to the feast of light,

  my men

  to the feast of awareness,

  for I am a woman.

  I am the earth’s steady purity,

  the enduring glory of time,

  for I am human.

  — Translated by Zara Hushmand

  Mirza Agha Asgari

  Asgari was born in 1951 in Asadabad, Hamadan. By the time he was eighteen, his poetry and other writings began appearing in various publications in Iran. He was twenty-four when his first collection of poetry, Tomorrow Is the First Day of the World, was published. In the early 1980s, his poetry, which often deals with freedom and politics, led to repressive actions against him by government authorities. As a result, he adopted the pen name Mani and continued to publish his works illicitly. In 1985, Asgari left Iran for West Germany, where he continues his cultural and literary activities, becoming the editor in chief of an Internet-based Iranian literary magazine on art and literature.

  AMOROUS

  We called love: one-half of existence;

  a mad star in sanity’s night sky.

  And said:

  Though love

  is the song of creation,

  but it’s two hearts’ yearning

  and two smiles’ allure

  that brings it life.

  Just as the flapping of wings

  make flight.

  We bound love to red rose’s name,

  and said:

  — Enough this sojourn between silence and words,

  for to be locked amid clarity and doubt

  is a kind of death, a grave affliction.

  No escape for one who reaches the summit’s edge . . .

  but to return or

  fly.

  We tied love to a dove’s wing

  and said:

  — Why this hush?

  One must unrobe

  each word.

  Even though we think with forbidden words

  it is other words we use

  to portray ourselves!

  — Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

  Mina Asadi

  Born in 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran province, Asadi began her career as a journalist at several well-known Iranian publications. Her political views and her opposition to the monarchical government led her to leave Iran in 1976 for Sweden, where she continues to live and work. Her poetry and essays often deal with oppression against children and women as well as protesting censorship. Since the early 1980s numerous collections of her poetry have been published in England and Sweden. She has also published various studies on Iranian children living in Sweden, and on immigrants and racism.

  WEDNESDAY IN MARCH

  Love goes up

  a breath-taking staircase.

  Daffodils bloom

  from your hands.

  And the dead goldfish

  caught in the glass jar

  inside the frame of the still-life painting

  begins to swim again.

  Love goes up

  the breath-taking staircase.

  You

  blossom

  in my hands.

  — Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

  WAKEFUL REVERIES

  These hands you caress so tenderly

  have touched that lifeless form.

  Not a nightmare,

  not the illusion of a passing glance

  through the shattered windowpane

  of an abandoned morgue.

  And you, too,

  you who stroll through the garden

  at night,

  you, too, will hear the weeping,

  the bursting open of hearts

  and the stench of a thousand bodies

  torn asunder,

  stretched under the meridian sun.

  — Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

  Roya Hakakian

  The author of two acclaimed volumes of poetry in Persian and most recently a memoir in English of post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No, Hakakian left Iran in 1984 and a year later moved to New York, where she worked as a journalist, most recently at CBS on 60 Minutes II, where she was an associate producer. She is also a frequent contributor to Connecticut Public Radio. In addition, Ms. Hakakian is a documentary filmmaker. Armed and Dangerous, her film about child soldiers, was screened at a special session of the United Nations. Ms. Hakakian is a recipient of the 2002-2003 Dewitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellowship.

  I MUST BURY HIM

  I must bury him

  and not fear this pause in the past

  and not turn into a pillar of stone

  looking back.

  I must pluck him

  off the palm of my hand

  and not let this knot in my throat

  stop my breathing,

  not let my spleen

  swell in my temples.

  I must bury him in a way

  that would let me live,

  that would leave me room enough for a smile

  when remembering youthful memories.

  He arrived

  and I stood firm,

  and grafted his wounded form

  on to t
he slender stock of my youth

  and I bore him on.

  I did not love without him

  and endured much with him,

  and he laughed the same

  in joy and when perturbed.

  And it was for his sake

  that I,

  a pliant poet,

  turned into a clown,

  fonder than a fool,

  and rode on a broom,

  calling out to the heavens.

  With every laugh

  I bought myself a piece,

  not of love everlasting

  but of my daily grain of friendship

  from the fleet-footed vendor of vernal wares.

  He always asked:

  “And when will you write me a poem?”

  not knowing that I can fool him,

  can fool myself

  but not my muse.

  Now if I bury him,

  even myself surviving,