Mohammad Mokhtari
Poems
Iran

Translated to English by Manavaz Alexadrian

With the Lonely Sun and Farms
I was born
With my eyes fixed on the sky
And my heart set on earth;
My recollection
Stretched
To the small stream in the corn field;
I began speaking
To the rock and the tree;
I was alone with the sun and the field
When a scythe fell from the bank
To make me cast away my eye
From all the world
And extinguish
The flames of my wrath.

When they opened my eyes
To the sky and the cloud
They showed me
The wind
And they sung my patience
On the stone arches.
But what hand
Raises
The makes the sky revolt against me
And bids the wind
To add to my suffering?

I know and am still plundered.

I have built a bow of snakes and grass
And a horse from mountains
To let the glorious moon
To flaunt
In their meadow,
But I didn't fall
Suddenly into fire;
And long since
I have fed my bone
To this fire.

But how late
I have grown attached to the earth
And the sky above,
When hands and corn ears
Are pillaged.

I grow silent:
A handful of dust
Settles
On my child's eye.

The breeze glides over the coast
And the sun
- When dark clouds are falling -
Shall shine
On my bone of fear and sin.


The House of Illumination
Cast your most beautiful glance
At the world,
For the sun also
Is crying.

Heave your freshest breath.
Death is so intermingled with your shadow
That the light of hundred suns
Cannot distinguish it.

The most dazzling song of wave,
In the wide ocean's breast
Unites
With the silent sleeps of tranquility.
Sing
The most beautiful and fanciful melody of liberty,
For little has remained
To the ocean shore.



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