In Ma’arra, the poet Abul ‘Ala
Was called a death-worthy infidel
And a thousand years after his death
His statue was beheaded.
The scent of chicken tahchin
Is wafting up to me
Through the window
And I know soon
She will knock at my door…
The day will come when my sisters
No longer wear forced chadors.
Let that day be in summer
So that we can go for a picnic.
Once with my father
I sat in its shade.
We were coming from Isfahan
And wanted to go to Ferdows
From the desert.
But larks have not forgotten to fly
And grass still sprouts from the earth of Kabul
And rivers are replenished by the snows of Pamirs
And the groves of Samangan are filled with sounds of birds.
In the Quran, God taught Adam the names of all things. Even the angels didn’t know the names. Do we carry the weight of these words with us? Do they hold us responsible?
My father never told us
That Khomeini had visited him
For medical treatment many years ago
During the hostage crisis, when I was Albanian,
my history teacher conceded, “You’ve to be born into English
to be its rightful citizen.” I wanted to be an American poet,
but was a Persian settler.
Suddenly, I remember Ezzat
Who was shot in Evin Prison
And buried in the Cemetery of the Infidels
In a mass grave without any gravestones.
A 16-year-old Iranian girl has been notified by the local morgue to identify her mother’s body. Over the course of the next 15 minutes, this painful task proves to be more difficult than we could have ever imagined in Alireza Ghasemi’s engrossing and humanist portrait “Lunch Time.”
I do not wait for poetry
But go in search of it
Because my wings are broken
And I am left far from my nest…
I was fifteen years old
When I found the moon in the Biabanak sand dunes.
What shall I do with you, homeland?
What shall I do with all this blood?
Where shall I put you
to prevent you from filling my days
with damage and grief?
I like the sweet accent
Heard on the stairs this morning:
Persian with a hint of American.