Banafsheh Hejazi
Poems
Iran

Translated to English by Manavaz Alexadrian

Confession (1)
I confess that
the table
the candlestick
and dishes
know not who
was lost in the darkness.
An author
is full of misguided people.
Have you ever seen
a first class hanging:
fall in love with North Sea
or concluded a blank contract
with border metals?
You said the best player
is a statute
which doesn't rot with the passage of years
and often
I have been sealed
in coral texts
between several shadows,
a bunch of keys and a newspaper.


Confession (2)
I confess that
the translator has made a mistake
to presume that you have shone
as nocturnal hunter
and I guess
the blue ballpoint pen hasn't written that
I was wearing a green shirt
at the time of land slide.
I confess that
there is no guarantee
by passing through stone stairs
and crowded passages,
not to wither
from an agitated assurance
before sunrise
I confess that
your voice
is slowly
vanishing in the wane of the moon
and the town becomes quiet
when a bullet dies mysteriously,
and I confess that
nobody died in this accident
The woman's corpse
is nothing but a thousand-page report
It is a mice-en-scene
that has blocked itself,
and I deny this fact
that you didn't shine
in the role of a mountain summit,
a wharf
and a rope

By the way
what was the color
of my shirt?


Confession (3)
I confess that
I perished in less than thirty minutes
in a place at the sidewalk's night.
There was neither a sea
nor a jungle
not even a bed in your town.
Like a puff
with the only word that you said
the ice cream won't cool me
even if I cross every road in the world
Harvest me!


With You, Without You in Five Days
A song coming from a nearby bar
The sea amid pines
Lace curtains
Golden rings between sheets
and rain.
Two cups of tea
A lemon
A train in the distance
A naked boat
A horse in a picture
and rain.
Overcoat
Piano
A naked sky
A bunch of keys
beside brandy glasses
and rain.
A wind rude against the street
A silent sailor,
beside night
Two chairs, a table
Moss
and rain.
Autumn
Bed
Cigarette
Unwashed plates
Wind, River
and rain.


Big Game
During the night
your poster that
had remained half-finished magnifies.
There is no objection
about the necessity of a woman in a relation
like the sound in a story,
hairs,
STONE,
hundred years
hanging rope
and repetition.
But the street
misses you
and your bunch of keys
me.


Gethesmane Garden
How easily end
simple pleasures
lighted lamps
and eyes that are full of circulation
It can start right today
and end
exactly like the wind
which is closer to the wooden drum than everything else
to a woman who lived one day...

I have reached at year two thousand and three
reached your shirt
behind a background
where you existed with the hero of the fiction
and the light that carried me away

I think I have arrived at year two thousand and three
at a time that is running away
I am so near it that I can hear its echo
or nothing,
like listening to me when I talk to myself

How easily Judas finishes
who was a man.


An Open Case
The clock
will play
in difficult years.
Repetition escapes and returns.
Your chair was empty
until the end of the ceremony.
In the fairies' story
darkness was reduced to minimum.
Maybe it is my own problem
that a vulture passes,
somebody must have been exploited
Fancies and
nightmares
will never leave
orchards and
city squares and
bridges.
Surely
it has happened to you
that a five-century old file has remained open.


Picasso, Banafsheh and Crow
My problem
is with the nature of objects
without you
and a ballpoint pen that doesn't write.
There was no coffee
in my mind,
I lit a cigarette.
Let me write another poem
and put the train's whistle
instead of loving you
without a wet handkerchief
and a painting from Picasso's blue years!


Montana
Listen to my words!
I am writing two persons with a new scenario
Why?
I don't know
It isn't from idleness;
May be it is a obsession
that I am afraid nobody will fall in love more
It is many years since everybody is holding her own umbrella and window
and blows her smoke at the windowpane.
Buy me a box of Montana brand
when you come
from the opposite booth!
and the name of painters for your poems.
An empty frame
is me
when I don't exist


River
The river is wet
up to the peak of all cherry trees
and I hate 37º
Midway between me and you
a butterfly
is traveling.
Let the moon's shadow
smell deceitfully
I love you
the way I prefer!


Piano
For the first time
your special issue
has remained unfinished.
Short days are strange days.

Thunder too seeks peace
but weekend punishment
surrounds me.
The sofa turns more colorful in my mind
the bow-like moon
the slope,
the beach.
A strange man
is not a natural born killer.
A lock of your hairs
meets my earrings
and before I blink
it turns to a monster, bronze or useless things.
Again you tie up your shawl
and suitcase

What must I do with last performance of Palates?


Chat
The story began from the moment
that the play was aired.
I guessed quite right
that you have never been a lover.
In a restaurant of the town I heard somebody say:
"Words have lost their credit"
Long since I have not heard from you.
Is the Bermuda triangle
still in the mode?
From your life I borrow things:
a Friday* crossword puzzle
a dark chandelier
and thousands interpretations
that all talk about making dramatic situations
for loving me.
Line by line being with you?
No, I didn't want that.
The ball circles in the sky
and I chat with myself
amid objects.

*(Friday is the weekend in Iran)


Signature
It has nothing to do with personal experiences, at all
beginning with love
and dying convulsively within a text
The reporter says with a hint:
the terrace is dark but
several petals
weekend
about seven in the afternoon
a bench
and
you.
I untie
my necklace,
bracelet,
and hair clip.
I clean my make up
and with a single ring
I sign the order of my own destruction.


Fax
Mixed dialogs
are useless
about my fantasies and yours
- rivers sink
very strangely -
the pine too
pays for the change of season
When you were here
my pleated skirt
seldom was hung in the wardrobe,
I had no reason to file your file

I don't remember
whether my shoes that you pulled out
was wine
or crushed sand
but your room's curtain is a notice
that officially endorses
my repeated death

The whole world
is an exhibition of berthed ships
and your key
is the lost chain of a man that existed one day
and the drought had not seen the city, yet

I will be troubled
with another phone card
by your anxiety again
I will be troubled
by a fax that does not operate well
in the northern hemisphere.


Eau de Cologne
Only your name was the desert
and a semi-dark building
Tissue paper is a second hand answer
to the years that I concealed
for he who has died
one profile
is enough.
I will spray Eau de Cologne
on your character
and starch
on your comic books
but my days
look like the earthenware of
an ordinary crosswords puzzle,
and the finished episode of a short film
that has no angle of doubt.
Tell me how I must repeat the chocolate?
How?

I must have understood
the meaning of a ticket destined
for the world
You hadn't told me about it


Address
It doesn't matter
if it was the tenth street or eleventh street
the fences were simple fences
there were matted chairs
and opposite your address
a river was running towards the gulf
It doesn't matter
if you existed
within the frames of those times
or an earthenware star
It doesn't matter
if it was a good year
or it was a secret migration
towards a palace on the water
at the extreme end of billboards
I have been floating at the start
from the infinite beginning


Rainy (1)
Crosses the street,
a woman that shapes the rain

you cross
with an umbrella
that bewilders the distance
and a play
that doesn't happen.
The one who reached the zero point
was from a fantasy



    Caroun Photo Club (CPC)