MANUCHEHR AATASHI

Self-Awareness

To the Memory of my son, a broken branch

From what numbered alleys
did they come
losing their way toward home
in the hour when we-
trotting the same path-
remember the names of the fallen stars.

In the alley of the wind
you shall reach the storm,
in the alley of sighing
you shall scream and mourn.

In the clear throat of the seashells,
like the sun shining through the garden of water,
blossom the delicate buds of pearls.

When it came that you should not be
I cursed the wind in the alley
and the kite in the wind.

Whom shall I call
each day opening the window
that in past winters
framed your playful commotion?
Whom shall I call
without him coming?

Oh, the hunter of colors,
how many branches are there between us?
How many flowers?

Translated by Ali ZarrinPARTOW NOORIALA

PARTOW NOORIALA

be my wolf

be my wolf
till the white sighing of the moon;
clutch your paws onto the cloud of oblivion

perditiion of lethargy
requires bitterness.
Sink deep into the soul,
your sharp fang,
wake me up.

The pine tree
gets beneedled
the moon rolls over in the valley
Venus, the morning star
gives my awakening the evil eye.

Translated by Afshin NassiriMAJID NAFICI

MAJID NAFICI

At the Venice Pier

I am stuck in "who are you?"
and consumed with "what do you want from me?"
The flock of pigeons
          fly away
and a child at a little distance
          smiles.
Young couples
and lonely fishermen
still stand
and I spit in the ocean
a piece of a poem
I have chewed intensely.
Translated by A.D.ABBAS SAFFARI

ABBAS SAFFARI

Journey in Four Episodes

1) The Village
The sun rolls up
the yellow mat of the moon
from the village roofs.
The girl on the roadside
reviews
       her sunny dreams.




2) The Plain
The bus with the flat tire
                     undulates
                               In the red curtains of the mirage.
Fellow travellers
           nap
in the confining cage of the shade.




3) The Road
The wind snatches
the fragrance of the nocturnal village
                   From the waves of hair.
The girl journeys
                             north of her desires.




4) The Street
The hedge and the bird
still undulate
      in the pleats of her skirt.
She awaits the green light.
                            on the other side of the street.




Translated by A.DROYA HAKKAKIAN

ROYA HAKKAKIAN

A Handful of Mud

A handful of mud
a hundred tear drops
three rubies
        were my life's secrets.

When I was molten
there were no molds
whose hold would make me beautiful

Nor was there a statue
to emulate

So then, with two trembling hands
I pounded a hammer on my own shape

I fell apart
let out a deep sigh
and recreated myself.

Translated by A.D.

ALI ZARRIN

Made You Mine, America

No more apologizing
for my lifestyle
the inadequacy
of not being
normal wage-earner
not saluting punch-clocks
or office protocol

rejecting eight-days-a-week
twelve-hour-work-day
three part-time jobs
layoffs and buy-outs
abandonment of towns and their people
three generations of arthritic arms
carpal-tunneled hands
and cancerous lungs

borrowed living on freeways
of maxed-out credit
lines and late payments--
the nightmare
of usury
America
in the poems of Walt Whitman
Langston Hughes
Allen Ginsberg
the songs of Woody Guthrie
and Joan Baez
I made you mine
by
rushing to you
at night and daybreak
by air and water--
on the land
getting a social security number
in the year nineteen hundred seventy
working the grave
yard shift for ITT
a teenager four levels below the ground
a cashier in a three by eight booth
under the Denver Hilton Hotel
sheltering derelicts
who slept on beds
of cardboard and newspaper
pillows of shoes
my young body luring
late night prostitutes and transvestites
hip to my accent
the midnight thief
pouring mace in my eyes
escaping
up the long ramp

Making friends with the ancient natives
the purple gray afternoon
in the mud house of a Taos poet
reading poems
as the rain leaking from the roof
beat a tin pail
and feeling at home
when stars over the Rockies'
tumultuous night sky
swallowed me

Driving a Yellow Cab
in Five Points the night
a driver was stabbed seventy times
and beheaded in an alley

passing through barbed wires
and waiting for hours in the INS lobbies
facing grouchy secretaries
overwhelmed by the languages
they can't speak and accents
they can't enjoy
becoming naturalized
in the year of bicentennial celebration

the migration of my parents
to your welfare state
of millions living
in tenement housing
reeking with the smell of urine
and cheap liquor

traveling
the US of A
as large as Whitman's green mind
white beard and red heart
from the Deadman's Pass rest area
on the old Oregon Trail
to the Scenic Overlook at Dixie line Maryland
from White Spot--Albuquerque
to Cafe Rose--Arlington
from Gate's Rubber Factory--Denver
to AC Rochester--Flint
from Boulder High School
to the University of Washington

from Mountain Home--Idaho
to Rockford--Illinois
as large as Mark Twain's
laughter and irony
tear-drop by tear-drop
from YMCA's casket-size single rooms
in Brooklyn
Chicago
San Francisco
to Denver's Colonial Hotel
corner of 15th and California
the home of old men
and women subsisting on
three hundred sixty four dollar
social security checks

my sister
marrying a Vietnam war veteran
an orphan of WWII
whose German mother did not reveal
his American soldier father
gave him up for adoption
to Russian parents
who raised him in Venezuela

waiting on
Denver oilmen in the Petroleum Club
nights of jazz at Ilchepultepek
the Larimer of the past
where Arapahoes lived in their
tepees and now sleep
on the sidewalks
with battered lips
and broken heads
going door to door on Madison Ave
Seattle
selling death insurance for American
National
servicing houses of bare minimum--
a TV and a couch
drunken men and women
lonely ailing old African
women making quilts
selling each
for fifty dollars
marrying a teacher
a third generation auto worker
whose parents shared crops
in Caraway, Arkansas
fathering two tender boys
born in America
with their blue and brown eyes
half origins
of Asiatic Caucasianness
substituting
for teachers
babysitting bored Middle School
children
driving them
home in a school bus
teaching your youth
to write English
and speak Persian

loving
your children
daughters
sons
mothers
fathers
grandmothers
and grandfathers

hating your aggression
you aligned yourself with the worst
of my kind
exiled my George Washington--
Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq--
helped Saddam bomb my birthplace
destroy the school of my childhood
his soldiers swarming the hills of Charzebar
where as a child I hunted
with my grandfather
sold arms to warmongers
who waged battles on grounds
that my great-grandfather made
fifteen pilgrimages on foot
to Karbala

now laying claim
to your Bill of Rights
and Declaration of Independence.

I came to you
not a prince
who had lost his future
throne
not a thief finding
a cover in the multitude
of your metropolis

hiding behind your volumes
of law
not a merchant dreaming of
exploiting
your open markets
not a smuggler
seeking riches overnight
but a green-horn seventeen-year-old
with four hundred dollars
collected
after dad sold his prized Breda
and mom some of her wedding jewelry
with a suitcase of clothes
and books--

Ferdowsi
Baba Taher
Khayyam
Rumi
Hafez
Shakespeare
Nima
Forugh
and a small Koran--
my grandmother's gift
not to conquer
Wall Street
Broadway
or Hollywood
I came to you to study
to learn
and I learned
you can't deny me parenthood
I lost my grandparents
while roaming your streets

travelling across your vast emptiness
you can't turn me down
I gave you my youth
walking and driving Colfax nights long
I came with hate
but now
I love you
America