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Mehdi Akhavan Saless (M. Omid)
Poems
Iran
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Translated to English by Manavaz Alexadrian
Dandelion
Dandelion!,
Say, from where you are coming,
From where and what news you have brought?
May you bring good tidings!, but
In vain your roam
Around my roof and door.
Do I don't expect any news,
Neither from a friend, nor from a native district;
Go to such a place where ears and eyes watch you;
Go to such a place where they expect you.
Dandelion!,
Everything is blind and deaf in my heart,
Stop lurking here where the self is a stranger to is soul;
You who have always brought bad news.
I tell my heart:
"You are false, o you are false,
You are a cheat, you are a cheat.
Dandelion!, o, but... alas...,
Did you leave with the wind?
I'm speaking to you! Where did you go? o
Is really any news anywhere still?
Has a warm ash still survived
In a hearth - I don't covet a flame - but does a small still exist?
Dandelion!,
The clouds all over the world
Weep in my heart all the day and night.
Condolence and Greeting
for Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh
Did you see, O mate, that the friend didn't come?
The dust arrived but the horsemen didn't come.
The candle burnt and melted
Yet that golden morning did not come.
We adorned the house and the table
Yet that famous guest did not come;
Sadness devoured the heart, joy and strength,
Yet the healer of pain did not come:
Those palaces were rent from their foundation
And all we did, did not serve any aim,
My heart burns for your pain and your patience,
O gardener, the spring didn't come;
Many blossoms budded and withered,
Yet no flower did blossom;
The eye of spring boiled yet no more
Water flew to the purling stream;
O ancient lion, tied by the chain,
Who did not ashamed of being in chain,
The jail consumed your flesh but no messenger of liberty,
To you and the prison did come ...
Over your noble and thirsty farm,
Except the cloud of poison, nothing did come.
Not even one from those caravans
Loaded with gems did come.
O the rarest and rarest of our time!
To you no luck for succor did come;
A long time elapsed and no brave man like you
In the battlefield did come:
Alas those ships
Did not reach a peaceful coast,
And your boundless pain, alas,
Was not accounted at all.
And your base friends in the battlefield,
Did nothing but to escape the field;
I know and your heart knows how much you suffered,
Though no symptom of grief did you display;
No bulk of rain poured on the mountain
As much as sadness poured into your soul.
My Orchard
The cloud with its cold and damp skin
Has embraced the heaven tightly;
The leafless orchard
Is alone day and night
With his pure and sad silence.
His lyre is rain and his song is wind,
His garment is of nudity cloak,
And if another garment it must wear,
Let his Warf and woof be woven by golden ray.
It can grow or not grow, wherever he wants or doesn't want;
There is neither a gardener nor a passerby.
The depressed orchard
Expects no spring.
If his eye sheds no warm luster
And on his face no leaf of smile grows,
Who says the leafless orchard is not beautiful?
It relates the tale of fruits raising their heads to the heaven, and now lying in the base coffin in earth.
The leafless orchard,
His laughter is tearful blood,
Mounted for ever on his wild yellow stallion,
It roams in autumn, the king of seasons.
The Moment of Meeting
The moment of meeting is near
Again I am frantic, drunk;
Again my heart trembles and my hand
Again I feel in another mood;
Ay! wind disturb not my smooth hair,
Ay! razor cut not my face by neglect;
Heart, make me not ashamed!
The moment of meeting is near.
Lyric No. 3
Ah bastion and shelter
Prettiest moments
Of innocence and glory
My loneliness and solitude!
O my sweet and majestic river!
With whom bewildered I'm afloat
In the big streets of chastity,
in dead-end streets of fulfillment,
In the rosy garden alley of shame,
In the streets of caressing,
In streets full of many nights
Marching to the silver banks of dawn,
In foggy streets of too much rabble,
Never complaining of the pleasure of sleep,
In the noble streets of odes which your eye reads
Now and then if it stops speaking,
Enchanted and with no blesses it advances.
O glorious river abounding with all beautiful purities!
O my charming and magic river!
O you who have advanced afar!
Tell there which star
Is the brightest old companion of your nostalgic nights?
O my old companion of nostalgic nights.
Ah bastion and support,
Saddest present moments of your absent eye void of light,
In your darksome, bitter and melancholy garden lane,
In streets so many nights now utterly blind,
Tell there which star
Is your nocturnal lamp, particle of sun?
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