Poem 25 / Notes for the Wooden Nightingale

Soldier

3 Decades of Motherland or Dear Day! I Know You Will Arrive

Poems by Shams Langeroodi
Translated by Sina Fazelpour



1985
Poem 4 / In the Moonlight Terrace of the World

How innocent it stares at me,
this broken sunlight
this bent tree
this mute duck.

How dumbstruck it looks at me,
my harvested motherland.


1991
Poem 1 / The Thorn Umbrella


Rain was falling recklessly
rain and snow
as to not get wet
we found shelter
in a dark well.

What a bitter trap-hole
one way a trap door to snow, blood and mud
one way leviathan, the attack of ghosts, death's hunting hum
the broken ladder.

You dear deities who turn the guilty
with a flick of a finger
into stone and star
curse us
curse us
so we could fly out of this well
in the shape of a bird
with an exploded heart.


2000
Poem 25 / Notes for the Wooden Nightingale

Speech about freedom is incomplete
when not even a breeze
assists
the dead
to shake grasses and ants
from their dark eyelashes
with some pride.

Speech about freedom is incomplete
when martyrs
don't open up their lips to speak.

Speech about freedom is incomplete
when you stand in line for bread
and the opportunity to vote
is gone.


2010
Poem 47 / Lip Readings of My Trout

Dear day!
I know you will arrive
don't know if I will
see you.

Poem 3 / The Thorn Umbrella

I had opened up the window
to call you
a wall of leather and smoke
stood in front of me
I cried
no whisper came about,
I sighed
a bee of foam took wing in my throat
and a burning thread
sewed my lips tight.

Between the layers of my body
the spy was sleeping
I didn't know.

Poem 1 / Poems for You Who Would Never Hear

Crumpled in the mass of thorns
I'm stuck, without a road
without a voice.

Fall will arrive
I will think of you
will you
still be pale, laying down on your side? -
Pale and on your side, void of dreams, bent with a bit of blood
around your lips,
solely
listening to the echoes of the galloping horses
inside the wide mirror fields
empty fields, clear, convulsive and captivated
inside the glasses
and a flower stem in your hand
to place upon the lips of your first savior horseman
a horseman without a body
without a horse
without the limits of time
erected inside the dreams.

Poem 28 / Sailor of The Streets

The game is over
and they killed you in the game.

Poem 14 / Poems for You Who Would Never Hear

Of the chairs
none were missing,
we set the table
pulled the chairs forward
placed your photograph
over your empty spot
and stared at each other

like some horses that suddenly
listen to the faraway shivers of an oncoming quake.