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Mahmoud Kianoush
Poet, Novelist & Translator
Iran
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by: Manavaz Alexandrian
Born in Meshed, 1934
Mahmoud Kianush is a novelist, translator and something of an authority on children poetry, as well as a poet. A native of Meshed, he studied English literature and he began his career as civil servant.
The first of his half-dozen volumes of poetry appeared in 1961, and since then, he has also written several short stories and novels. In most of his writing the poet is preoccupied with metaphysical and philosophical thoughts. His ability to instill symbolic significance in the everyday objects of ordinary experience makes him an effective writer and poet.
More recently, his intense use of prose in novels such as The Busy Man and his research on children poetry have affected his poems in interesting ways. In his more recent poems, he draws on them of the apparent wisdom and poetry to be found in children's conception of reality. In style these poems display a high degree of facility and heightens their effect.
Factory
Here
every button is connected to a generator
it's the work of iron and the arm
at every corner a steel giant
sleeps on the oily floor
spewing a world of fume
there is an old friendship between patience
and tuberculosis in the chests of men.
Here the roaring typhoon of a thousand wheels
sucks the blossoms of words
off your lips before they bloom
and throws them out the chimney.
Here
this is the storehouse of constant noisy explosions
voiceless lip gestures signal between hearts
every breast is a furnace, fueled by remembrance
remembering sunset
(when iron gates turn on their heels
and tired oily men
rush out silently
in clusters)
remembering evening and home...
how good, ah!
to learn back and relax
with
Kids making noise
the sound of pots and spoons in the kitchen
and then sleep,
s-l-e-e-p...
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