|
|
|
Kiumars MonshiZadeh
Poems
Iran
|
Translated to English by Minou Alian
The Coffee House on the Way
It's blue
It's blue
her look is blue
It's like they've poured the sky
in his eyes
When she takes my hands in hers
I fell the blood circulate
on her fingertips
her pulse so rapid
like a hare's heart transplanted into her breast
Temptation to love
reminds me of the goldfish, fallen calmly asleep
in the waters of the crystal bowl
The goldfish that one day becomes lighter than water
and a hand that throws the red goldfish
-which is now neither fish nor red-
through the window
to the garden
so the gray seagulls
rain on the leaves of the aspen
and the apricot
My heart
just as the coffee houses on the way
is a reminder of nostalgia
No passenger will be let in for good
No passenger will be let in for good.
Liberty, the 5th Dimension
To prove the parity of its radii
the circle is bent around the center
how long could one make them follow each other
The echo of the sound of the chains
breaks the image of the songs of liberty
in the mirror of my eyes
Awaiting liberty is just as sad
as the inscription of the declaration of
Human Rights
on the walls of the concentration camps
Since man is not born free
to live free
to die free
man is a gloomy circle
that repeats itself.
Passing through the Forbidden Ground
Autumn nights
when the suspended leaves
swam in moonlight
I would watch the sky
wishing to learn as many members possible
to count the whole stars
Today, I've learnt
I shouldn't have counted things
which never belonged me
It's like my destiny was written
in the farthest stars
Has the man been sold to a star?
I will climb the sky of your look one night
and pour all stars into the sea
to invite the crazy fish to dinner
then I'll write the blacks destiny
on aspen leaves
The sky beyond the bars
is so small that
each prisoner
is an astronomer
No Longer!
Color Dream
You, in whose eyes thousands of gypsies sing
get up to pray for the man
who goes to fight with God
with empty hands
If you could
if you could have color dreams
I would bring you red iris
Where a star is a dot on your tea cup
misery is counting the dots of the world "fortune"
When the burning of the gunshot
disturbs the gun
blood screams in the doll's heart
Now, hundreds of birds dream
in hundreds of islands
in the eye of the night
We've got to close the hatch on sunlight
and cover the calendar with a cape
And that's when I know of all
I know that the most dormant clocks
shows the correct time twice
every 24 hours.
The Years before Astronomy
Should you return to my desert island
from the distant seas
I'll break the clock and the compass
at your feet
and set fire to your wet boat
fueled with the oars
and wash your body
free from the jealous looks of the fish
in warm milk
You, half a woman and half fish
you, whose body scales are more tender
than the songs of the iris
when the silvery falls of your locks
fall on your nude figure
and your wet eyes revive in me
the memory of the rain-washed grass in April
I'll tell you:
Love is something as grand
as a star
in the years before astronomy
More Red than White
Love is wild,
and yet wilder than that
is Love
We were two lines
always parallel
always parallel
not knowing that
line is a circle
with the radius of infinity
I,
beside loneliness
loneliness,
beside you
I,
closer to you
than dampness
to sand
Your fingertips
fly the music notes
and your calf
depicts the concept of alcohol
C2)
H5
O
(H
You,
who present the maturity of Africa
in your bosoms.
Blind Paths
I peep through the red porthole
of my weary mind
at the yellow gardens
of the passed by springs
At the long days
reaching junctions at nights,
in vain
in the carriage of life
to choose between
the two long paths
But I always, always had a sigh
at the corner of my lips
at the end of each path
wishing I'd taken the other one.
More Red...
Tonight,
lend me your eyes
to light a cigarette with its flame
Lend me your eyes tonight
lend me,
your heavenly eyes tonight
Since awaiting the rain
delays it.
It's Always Late
You're late
I'm going
farewell
I thread on the wet grass of your eyes
under the rain
cold and proud
no turning my face with hatred
You're late
I'm a poet who lives a bad fate
a man whose world is always late
I'd looked for a bridge for years
to reach the other side crawling
I found the bridge one day
the bridge stood there, but
the other side was just as futile
as this side for me
that day.
After You
After you
there was nobody
nobody
Water lost its face after you
after you
the green aroma of grass
felt yellow
After you
moon and fish and moonlight
and all what there was...
whatever there was after you
was the late of sadness
How can I say
how it passed after you
After you
there was nobody
nobody.
From Naught to Infinity
Universe is as small
as the bulk of a hare's dream
and the weary pulse of mankind
proud as me
The sound of reeds
growing in nowhere
is more fearful
than the leaden explosion
of light
inside the furnace
of the sun
from an azure galaxy
You've got to squeeze
the whole dimension
of time
inside the redness
of a bucket
made of
a cock's crow
Life is the consequence
of the escape of matter
in the infertile zone
of the vacuum.
Lemon-tinted Afternoons
How beautiful would love be
if it never knew the clock
And how beautiful would clock be
had it never been a clock
Lemon-tinted afternoons
lead me to nights
in music gardens
(with an umbrella of poems
and a rain of sunshine)
Her lips
are the ultimate beauty
and her eyes
invite the heavens to dance
She sings and sings
with eyes full of wine
and a smile of sugarcane
She sings
and I know, I know
there's a hand
that colors the afternoons brown
I know
love is more incomplete
than rainbow
since man
is not complete
earth
is not complete
and neither
is the solar system
nor the galaxies.
Cart man's Grief
With an armful of loneliness
flowerpot listens
to the song of the irises
from behind
the window of rain
A man
looks at the lead-colored sky
with a closed umbrella
under the rain
his look is so dark
like he's returning
from the moon's funeral
The old mule
drags behind
the cartful of wet grass
in a path it knows not
and the cart man says to himself:
"miles of moonlight
is wasted
behind the clouds"
And the road
is merged into darkness
to the end of horizon
Should God
feel the grief of the cart man
he'll weep so much
that the wheels of the cart
thrust into mud
if God feels...
if God...
if...
I.F.
Mirror Doesn't Like the Uglies
The day the bad-fated old leper
returned home after years long past
with his old, tangled leprous scars
he went straight for the shelf
and stared eagerly
in the indifferent eye
of the mirror
The mirror told him what it shouldn't have
a sigh crept on the scar of his lip
and he said:
"Whish the mirror would reflect a bit
before reflecting one's profile."
Hands With No Dates
Our hands
were short
and the dates
on palms
We cut our hands
and
th
r
ew
them
towards the dates
Dates
poured down
in abundance
But,
we had
no hands.
The Image Revolt
Black
black
black
her look is so black
like thousands of crows
fly from her eyes
A woman
imprisons my image
using colors I don't know
My incomplete image
will shatter
the frame of the picture
And all bells
will toll
in the hanging gardens
of liberty
I love
LIBERTY!
South of the Hell
'Wish you realized why
in the Autumn
that passed this plain
the greens turned yellow again
how far had the gray flock of the cranes
traveled in copper horizons
of the sunset
'Wish you realized:
life is an unenclosed jail
where you're sentenced
for life
and justice is
a moderate oppression
running in the vein of law.
Hiroshima
Hiroshima
Hiroshima
E=MC2
Hi
ro
sh
i
ma
The eastern poet
with a bucketful of blood
yells at the eyes
of the statue of liberty
Viva Vasco de Gamma
who didn't discover
America.
|
|
|
