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Manouchehr Atashi
Poems
Iran
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Translated to English by Manavaz Alexadrian
The Lay of Regret
One morning
- One true morning -
If the sun rises according to your wishes;
...
A frame of mountain and valley,
A frame of window, if the bird had reaches you -
...
A wide plain, wet tulips!
No!
A laughing sepal,
A sigh of contentment and peace
- O you melancholy and persistent one -
O living stone, an embodiment of patience! -
A defeated life would have been your portion.
The Moon and the Poet
I hung myself to the moon like water,
I hung myself to the moon.
With the moon I mix through water,
And the fishes of my eyes from every direction,
And the fishes of my eyes I let swim from every direction towards him,
And twist
The green nets of my gaze around it,
(I seek the moon,
I mix with the moon from sleep
And with the rope of my sigh
I reduce its height);
But
The moon
Passes over my body,
From water I sleep at the mountain feet,
From my slumbering childhood and youth;
From moments and hours,
From days, nights and years
(From years which have passed away in darkness and frightful
Without laying any bright mark
from myself
- In their sandy plain.
I fight the moon; I fight my sigh:
O moon!,
O moon!, you are still the same moon,
Which continuously and with the same pace
Calmly,
Calmly passed from crescent to the quarter of the moon and from the quarter moon to full moon and then to the wane of the noon,
And again rising from the wane of the moon
- Without any frown or feeling - like the former month.
O moon!,
When I was a child
You were a moon;
When I was young
(And was passing everything like an old man)
You were still a moon.
When I was growing to old age
(And was writing about death)
You were still a moon;
And now that I cross
- Shoulder to shoulder with death -
The silent shores,
And throw the daytime pebbles
Into dark and stale swamps,
You are still a moon.
O moon!
O for ever a moon!, we, we,
Are always traveling from crescent to the wane of the moon
And the possibility of becoming full moon
- Even under your light -
Does not hang in the stale waters of our sleep.
We always march from crescent to the wane of the moon; yes
Continuously we march, tired....
O moon!
Tonight again
You are sending your rays from your fixed height with your single pendulum;
You spread your rays on us;
From blue heights to your water,
And like always your moonlight color
Stretches over us cold and white,
And you cross us
Like the continued passage of water
From the stone...
O moon!
- Heedless of us and our night - you
Are not afraid of fame or shame,
Neither poetic praise makes you merry,
Nor the abuse of your night-walkers displease you.
You always rotate on your fixed orbit,
Intent in your own business,
Although
In poetry and in our look
Now you rise from the dark valley of Yush
- And from the confines of the reed grove -
And now atop sandy hills of Dashtestan,
You start to shine,
And you cast frightful shadows
On the prairies of our whims
And hurl the doves of the desert of melancholy passions,
Into the grip of the cities
Without consoling your self
With a breath of consolation.
You have always shone with the same color, yes,
From your green height
- From the blue to the water -
You have shined and will shine,
And you continue to tread your path
Sleeping at distant waters around the world,
And not a moment
Does occur in your cold and dump frame
On whose childhood you have shined,
On whose youthful years, you have shined
Or old age,
Or right at this moment
On whose dark grave and from what tribe
Are you sleeping.
O moon!
Shine on us but...
We Didn't Know
Had we advanced a bit further
Our path would have perhaps led to the sea,
Our sleep would have perhaps turned into dream.
Had we paddled more
Perhaps we would have an agreeable wind,
If we didn't return to the coast,
The water would perhaps have sucked our corpses into the depth.
We were neither a rushing river,
To gallop over, obstacles, sharp ends, plains to... the sea,
Neither were we a moat to serve as watering trough for the mangy wolf...
Nor a mangy wolf which is after its carnal desires,
To submit ..... to the secret moment of a cursed death undisturbed.
We didn't who called us, when and why? whom we called
and why we joined the path
Or why we were delayed.
....
We didn't know who we were and when we existed,
And who has tied this dog inside ourselves to the chain of our vein,
And when.
We don't know who we were and who we are,
Whether our pain was from a wound inflected by a heavenly stone
Or we ourselves are a stinking wound in the body of existence...
...
We didn't know.
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