English poetry at Platforma Festival

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Ali Abdolrezaei
by Ali Abdolrezaei
05-Dec-2011
 

متن شعرهای کوتاه انگلیسی م و همچنین متن
ترجمه انگلیسی شعرهام را که توسط  دکتر ابول فروشان انجام شده
بخوانید

Ali Abdolrezaei's short English poems

1
A pair of shoes – full of rain
the refugee sleeping
on the pavement

2
Leave me alone
Don't kiss me

A translation of baby's cry

3
There is no fruit
on the branches of a poem
find the root

4
Rose on river
then poem on letter
both without destination

5
Falling leaves
read haiku
on each one

6
Some white drops on her belly

wiped with a white cat

a haiku movie

7
My right hand
on her body land
a tourist without visa

8
Soldiers fight under a flag
The flag that only obeys
The wind

9
Love is the blind you help
cross the street
not knowing you're the one who crossed

10
You are leaving me
our little dog barks
isn't that enough?

11
I've looked everywhere
you're gone
even out of the picture frame

12
Once you came by bus
I'm still looking for you
in each arriving bus

13
I've fallen in love
an apple
from the tree as well

14
looking for a forest
in Covent Garden
on a walk with you

15
Repeating you you you
fills my house
I'm not alone

16
The husband kicked her out.
in her womb
the baby was kicking him

17
The Death Angel was here
I kicked her out
She was a lesbian

18
I am an addict
It's time
to quit you

19
You're so alone
hey moon
how many lovers have you left?

20
a naked woman lying on the sand
Waves licking the beach
Jealous moon

21
A little lamb separated from the herd
runs fast
The butcher is waiting

22
There is no one
To shut the alarm clock off

The old man is dead

23
Don't kill so many soldiers
to save a king
I hate playing chess

24
Kings are gone
but
we still play chess

Author: Ali Abdolrezaei
Translator: Abol Froushan

1
Pomegranate

This dry tree
how has it arranged itself so well
so well ... under the rain.... to stand up?
The pomegranate that's hanging
why should someone squeeze .... who knows nothing?

Why the rain that should rain down in this poem doesn't rain?

And life.... this short lullaby.... finally puts me to sleep
on a page that spent a life in 'I don't
know'

How many times should I write
the poem ... that I'll never write?
I'm sure....London's blood group
which most likely is O or
doesn't match mine
because I keep hitting the rain...keep getting wet

What ecstasy revolves round this
thought that's in my mind
I wish someone came
to stop this Dervish that keeps twirling in my head
the rain that keeps raining no longer comes to my poem

This cursed beast
has brought tears to all eyes

This Grand Inquisitor
who drags so much out of the clouds over London

Is someone idling up there
or is it true
that it's still raining?

We all die
so nothing ends
what a shame

2
Dark Veins

You are shot there
so your red cells flower ... in Freedom Avenue
you die
so snow
with its white cells
soft and softly
shroud you
hide you
so an ill wind won't blow
to steel you who were not one of them

You are not one of them
your arteries are arteries of a city
that which beats in Revolution Square
is still your heart
which sends off
one by one
all taxis down any street that leads
like a dark vein
toward my heart
that is in Freedom Square

We both fight in the same street
you are shot there
I die here

3
Album

This is my Mum Isn't she beautiful?
This is my brother and this, my father
If only he knew how door to door I am now
Poor innocent thing
This one is Sara the youngest
this smiley face also…can't remember the
name!

Exile, exile what havoc it wreaks on the memory
She's my eldest sister
She used to pass out laughing
when shooting pictures

I'm at a loss how these pictures of lips that have smiled
are movies of eyes that have cried
Leave it!
But how mixed up I am
Poor dear my peasant Mum
If freedom ever pays Iran a visit
You'll become my father's new bride
and after breakfast my sister
will burn frankincense
to smudge around my head and dispel the Devil's eye
on my having a Leila in the night most
and my Mum while boasting
will be throwing confetti and ululating in the paddy at
the bottom of the garden
so her son may eye up the lap of this lass and be
turned on - I'm turned on
Now that we're enthralled shoulder to shoulder in the
hall of this house
why not make believe we're wrapped in the bliss of rice
paddies? Let go

4
Banished

On this side of the world even if you had a living son
it would be a son on this side of the world
who went in the direction of the water that you spilt[1]
behind the tears
Never mind!

Pointlessly, you walk across my mind
If you were here
you would no longer be the one over there
you would be like me over here
If I returned
I would no longer be the one over here
I would be like you over there
I no longer laugh
nor even go off
I only exercise my own loneliness
like now that I feel fine
and I imagine I am imaginatively alone
Never mind!
On that side of the world even if I had a living mother
it would be a mother on that side of the world

5
Censorship

In the massacre of my words
they've beheaded my last line
and blood ink like is hitting on paper
there's death stretched over the page
and life like a window ajar is shattered by a rock
a new gun has finished off the world
and I imported goods like through this alley's doors
am still the very meagre room that emigrated

I in my life who am pen like to the lines of this meagre page
am mother
The cat's paws are still prancing
to scare the mouse
running for the hole they filled in

In pursuit of the lesson I did at school
I'm no longer Jack the lover to my Jill
I'm doing my new homework
You cross it out
And in the girl who will tumble at this poem's end
build a house
filled with a door open like a wound
and from in-between the edges of death
like a room gone from this house lived happily
a girl who wanting to make me her own
would throw morsels in her voice to tease me over
to the temple of her body
for my eyes to keep whirling and whirling
to make a Dervish of me again
How the eyes
these empty sockets
in between the love making of two are thousand handed
How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran
Fathurt mothurt my brothurt!
My condition is more critical than hurt
writing's more emasculated than me
and London with its hair highlights of a weather is still
sisterly awaiting
Death to stretch over my body
for life to kill me again

My heart is bleeding
for the poet whose queue of words is getting longer
for the branch less sparrow who's swallowed its twitter
for the restitution of a crow with no overhead wire
for myself
gone from the house like electricity
I was somebody
Did the foolish thing became a poet!

6
House

I am melting like a candle
sputtering on my flaming heart
You too darting fresh arrows about
an incendiary of this drama
don't say we have nowhere, we have no way
we are poets
can find our way through the page
at the end of a line of one well built poem
I'll put aside an alley for you
And who knows
May be at the end of this alley, we'll build a house one day

7
Earthquake

She raises a finger
Excuse me teacher!

If the holy cow[2] slips
tin roofs falling over
under lots of iron beams would we always die?

the teacher a tremour slipping down his face
pulled the pocket bottoms off his hands
and heavens fell down on the Nth class
crushed benches
lessons fallen from children's hands
and the walls what dreams they harboured for the inhabitants
except for a hand that appeared out of the rubble
rose the sound of a finger!

Excuse me Sir!
May I rise up!?

8
Painter

With the same fingers I made slender
take a sheet from your pile of paper
that might as well be A3
not to forget the same brush I gave you
and that box of paint I nicked for you
pin the sheet to your canvas
now take a seat on the chair from Poland
and I in the expanse of this park am sat
waiting on this half empty bench
Hurry up
Put a few somewhat yellow tips of branches by the grey sky you paint at
the top of the sheet
a background of few naked trees with few leaves in the air will be
excellent
now install a bench at the bottom of the sheet
and paint a man sat waiting love stricken
his lover has not come - so put more lines on his face
she's not coming - some more face lines please
won't come - so please some more still
just come inside the frame yourself and put my mind at ease

9
Circle

You are reading a poem called circle
Hold it there
Hands off the library
Arm around the windows and the doors
Bedding into the sofa
Now you may read a poem by Ali Abdolrezaie
Please open the book
You see? You are reading a poem called Circle
So hold it there
Take your hands off the library
Kick the door you already opened
Out of the house
Tumble down the stairs
In the new park or the old one behind the Town Hall
On the same bench that sent my father door to door and
stopped my mother Sit down
Tell them off those children playing ball
Now you may read a poem by Ali Abdolrezaei
Please turn the page of this gate whichever way you like
It's a shame You are standing at the end of a poem Called
Circle

10
Geometry

As I poured out of Paris clouds
and flew to an airport cafe
that sat face to face
with two black symbols
under two eyebrows

I had only read two lines on the forehead
when I arrived at a black subtitle
which the hair dresser up the road had censored
in two short line segments
in a fine font

above two symbols set in Chinese
vertical writing as one nose
you have two very lips
that want to swallow me

you're no prettier than
Lang-rude, Tehran or Paris
like other women I divorced
I'll separate from you too:
London

11
Poem

I was planting a poem when suddenly
a tapping on the door got me jumping
out of the sofa and my wife's flowerpot
and in the silence splashed on the water
I heard the key turn in the lock the door turn on the hinge
My own face behind the door I found facing me
like in the mirror the other day
He, still ringing the bell
unwelcome like the other day…

He came in, shook my hand and
with the same hand that shut the door threw me out the house.

I'm not one for turning back on this short poem
I am stuck outside the front door
and keep ringing
knowing the last line is waiting behind this threshold

NOTES
[1] A ritual in Iran where relatives, usually females such as mother or
sister, see off the travelling family member by spilling water behind
them.

[2] According to an ancient Persian Myth of Creation, the earth rotates
on the horn of a bull. Legend had it that if the bull coughed, the
earth would slip off its horn, causing an earthquake.

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