Iranian Poets Quotes

“Suppose That I'm Inevitable
Suppose that I'm inevitable
Even the veins of my right hand
Cross you from the drafts.

On my smooth nails
The breeze
Which is not from the sky
Is curving you
Either the veins of my right hand
Is running short
On my pulse.

Rolled along my fingers
Vanished
Not repeated forever
For the second.
I'm a half
Since the first.

The veins of my neck cross you all.

If the warmth of my ten fingers
Seized on your torn pieces of breath
All is over
With the dead-end alleys
all in oblivion.


(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“Like A Hanged Pitcher
Like a hanged pitcher,
No drink is pouring off me
It's natural to get numbed gradually.

Pig-headed seashells!
This boasting sky,
Is an anchor
which has fallen on my lap
This dizzy sky!
The moon's been cleared
A shadow's coming after me
Barefooted on my dreams
You used to run!

Enjoyed?!
Numb!

All my veins are connected to this land...

Like a hanged pitcher
Joyful of this sky
One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole.

And it was over!
The Gulf was over!
You waved hands.

Like a hanged pitcher,
It's simple!
I lost the game
And gambled away...

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“The Angles Of The Frame
1
Many years have passed since the day,
I looked into a mirror, saw a wrinkled face.
I've been disclosed to the bulging sands of my bed.

2
Aeons of breath account for the many veins in my atrium.

3
The bull I breast-fed for many years
And I've submerged into the frame.

4
I knew the justifications were hard,
Hard as against the current of water.
No news from the ambiguous points
something uncommon.
It can't be justified by natural rules,
many years we've been tangled on it.

5
This usurped land is a part of all buried treasure islands
No finger points in any direction.
Lost in the dead-end alleys
Tracing images without a compass.

6
Horse pounding pulse sing endlessly in my blood.
My kinsmen of horses…
Blood-line linked as to rays of a circle
like roots of a tree growing deep on the roof.

7
You can't stop the hands of the clock.
You can't come back to the broken minutes.
The days have been arranged one after another.
The knights have left the game one after another.

8
There was a straw mat where you fell asleep.
I became numb, quite used to the stillness of the house.

9
Was something supposed to get away from the core
to join us?
A century has passed and we still live in this house.


10
Dimensions have shifted
Not exclusive to the roof
The letters approved us as the residents of the house
They ran away as the convicts
And we got used to the standstill.

(Translated from original Persian into English by Rosa Jamali)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“The Last Street of Tehean
Facing the airport, all that's now left in my grasp
is a crumpled land
that fits in the palm of my hand.

Facing wavering sunbeams—
a sun that is angry and mute.
All the way from the salt sands of Dasht-e Lut,
it came, the dream
that forced my fingers' shift,
that set my teeth on edge.
A muted breeze,
whirlwind spun from sand dunes
all the way, even through the back alley.

Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?

No longer than the palm of the hand, a short leap,
exactly the length you had predicted.

A huge grave in which to lay the longest night of the year to sleep.

Sleep has quit our eyelids for other pastures,
has dropped its anchor at the shores of garden ponds,
has lost the chapped flaking of its lips,
poor thing!

Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?

With scissors - snip, snip - they are severing something.
The alphabet shavings strewn on the ground,
are they the letters that spell our family name?

With every zig-zag,
you cage my mother's breath,
her footprints fading
in the shifting sands.

Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?
No.
A strange land-shape form.
I will not return.
I left behind a shoe, one of a pair,
for you to put on and follow after me.



Translated from Persian to English by Franklin Lewis”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“The Flintstone
Block No.1:
A whole nation has created the kindling
Which owes you desperately
But it hasn’t been specified
Whether it’s the flintstone
Or A firestorm?

Block No.2:
A piece of my happiness is in debt with the flintstone
You’ve turned to the rocks
But it’s for the flint stone.


Block No.3:
I’m in debt with the flintstone
The whole world is in debt with the flintstone


Block No.4:
It has cast a spell
For all your desires
Behind the railing.

Block No.5:
I’m the mother of this Flintstone
I’ve nourished it
I’ve shed tears on it
If the world is on fire
I’m the one to blame.


Block No.6:
I’ve betrayed the heaven above
God is disabled by it.


Block No.7:
And since then people have taken the vow of silence, …

From 'Dating Noah’s Son'

Rosa Jamali

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali