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Nahid Kabiri
Poems
Iran
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Translated to English by Manavaz Alexadrian
Tomorrow When You Cease to Be
Tomorrow when you cease to be,
your empty place
in my moments
will be here again..
The sobbing star,
the soft drops of rain
will be here again.
Tomorrow when you cease to be
the dead house,
the coffee and the cigarette
will be here again.
Your pretty picture
in its usual place
will be here again.
Tomorrow when you cease to be
the repeat of life
and strange moments,
the song of exhaustion.
In the darkness of streets,
the migrating birds,
the bareness of branches,
vain expectation,
an endless path,
will be here again.
Tomorrow when you cease to be,
the sound of church bell
in the cooped city
will be here again.
Your memory,
the murmur of the wind,
will be here again.
Tomorrow when you cease to be,
the bitter Sunday,
dank and silent,
will be here again.
The season of endurance,
all through life
will be here again.
Tomorrow when you cease to be,
your memory with me
till my dying day
will be here again.
Perfection
Let us look at things sincerely,
now that no mist of distance lurks
and the sea
whispers the blue waves.
We have seen storms,
and pains,
fighting and forests
lies and gazettes,
the bazaars of anger, gold and daggers
and love
love
love...
a love which each morning
descended pretty,
and each sunset
departed wounded,
and a street which linked our blue maturity
with the anxiety of perfection,
and our separations
with its alien depressions
and fast and migrating winds
which dwelt in heavy rainy nights.
Now
that with the tired tick tack of the clock
from the ladders of time
are we descending,
in our privacy of hesitation,
lets have just cigarette and coffee
some papers and books,
and a mirror which
can make us accustomed
to its color of loneliness.
The Man, Who Descended from Rain
Why are you watching the stars?
The message of a thousand years old garden
will not reach the flying spring;
the sky
is far distant than you deem,
the poor mulberry tree
has suffered and suffers so much thirst
that all its existence has dropped
drop
by drop
on the arid soil;
and now its dead trunk,
is the resort of shameless ants and bees.
Among the moss
I lost the memory of a man who descended from rain
in a wandering silent stream,
in the same way that I loose myself
in a crowded and lighted street;
I carried
the dream of a man who descended from rain,
every evening
with cigarettes, bread and some grapes
into my house
and behind closed windows I used to question him:
"Say, what is the news?".
But the dream of the man who descended from rain
never knew
that he cheered me...
In the crossroads of noise and lie and baseness,
i screamed: "O..,
are we alive or dead?"
and I transferred the coldness of my hands
into my empty pockets.
In the street
there was nobody
so that I could deliver
my grief of loneliness to him...
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