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Ali BabaChahi
Poems
Iran
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Translated to English by M. Alexandrian
Unless You Return...
I am as desirous of your return
As a child,
At a Norouz holiday morning,
Or a swallow
At a spring noontime;
And me,
For the joy of seeing you.
I am so absorbed in your mirror
That the world passes beside me
While I do not turn my head.
In bloody seasons too
One can fall in love.
I envy the lover doves,
Who stretching their wings
Pick up the seed,
And I envy the star and rain
Which kiss you
At your moonlit profile
And I a flower
Which blossoms at your bidding.
In bloody seasons also,
One can fall in love.
Unless you return,
Or arise out of a blossom
Or descend from the sun,
Otherwise day
Is a coffin
Mounted on the shoulders of cloud
Taking us
To unseen horizons;
And love
Is a dying dear,
Which lays its head on the shoulders of the rain.
Come!
Come with a body of fire!,
With the manifestation of thunder.
Alas
Where I can see you again
Oh illuminating star?!
For without you
I will grow old
Until the time of nocturnal ramble.
As soon as you return,
The stars will fall in love
And youth
Will arrive
With the rain.
Autumnal
Perhaps there is something
In the morning of autumnal rains,
Which repeals the hand, ....
The yellow and violet in the pavements,
And find a green box,
And lay several Ashrafi flowers by your side.
In each drop of rain
There is perhaps a brilliant spell
Which makes the parrots speak;
Or perhaps some candy
Which entices the lost children
To return home.
Perhaps
The cracked pitchers of wine
Will assemble in a line from every direction,
And the house will be full of crimson,
And the hand
Turns into diamond branch in the air,
And at the tip of the foot,
Seven oriental girls
Will kindle a fire
On the leaves and flowers of Kerman carpet.
The thunderbolt from the cup-bearer's body
Will perhaps
Rotate the circle of the drunkards,
Love,
Becomes the flower of autumnal feast,
And death
Retreats to a corner.
Unless the coyness of the minstrels
Is trampled,
The face is converted with the flower leave of this ancient hag,
And no doleful cry
From any hole
Will break the mirrors of the air;
As if a drop of blood
Had fallen on an earth from a bird's plume.
Seven days and nights
Staring at the veranda of the cloud,
The lover of rain
Perhaps
Shall understand the secret of the minstrels
Who sell
The lines of the dead
To a foam of wine.
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