translated by Rebecca Ruth Gould & Kayvan Tahmasebian
Exile Diary
Perhaps the homeland was this:
A far lonely village,
in the frame of an empty window,
a dried narrow brook & the naked aspen,
& a dusty rooster
with an oblique comb,
a bucket & a few peasants,
a broken blue tile,
on the stones round the dark well’s mouth.
Above
& in the room
a bed with a sheet spread
—clean—
and a folded chequered blanket,
a table, a pen & the ink bottle which was dry,
& a table lamp
turned off,
and in the drawer (called khizeh)
a white notebook, white on white;
only
at the top of the first page
as if from time immemorial
in pale ink
blue
in distinct letters & the inscription:
“Diary Notes.”
Death
In the room on top
there is an old wardrobe,
in the wardrobe
a porcelain mirror.
But beware:
Never
see your face
in it!
It’s the keepsake of my grand grandmother.
In this room, she—
no!
up there—
her trace was lost
in a happy hour when
everything was like a game for her.
In the wardrobe, there is a coin beside the mirror.
It belongs to you!
Demonomania
Everything gets lost in this house
for a genie to replace the lost thing right away.
The genie is invisible.
It’s a small empty space.
In a small empty space,
as long as the small empty space is empty,
a temporary genie
begins to speak immediately.
If you listen carefully,
its words
are a small empty space
in a small empty space
as long as the small empty space is empty.
I said it. Didn’t I?
I said:
Everything gets lost in this house.
Death as an Absent-Minded Lover
Blue!
Your dress
on the hanger.
Wasn’t this the night when until dawn we ––
Until dawn?
What did we do?
Or where were we?
Here
or in another place, another night
with another in another passion?
Or perhaps it’s a night when until dawn we:
A dream, naked & empty …
Where is this?
Your dress!
Still
the fragrance of your body.
Who’s she?
No! It’s not cold.
I wish you were
here
or anywhere
just for a moment.
Like night
or like air,
it didn’t matter
who you were with.
&
like a
flower
white.
Ballad
Rain
fell & unexpectedly.
On the table there was almost nothing
with a small crumpled envelope.
The beloved & the lover & the other
lie down in the pit,
a shadow, a grass, a cold breath
petals & kisses, all picked off.
Rain fell & unexpectedly.
The clothes got all wet;
the green hat of the sad singer
at the foot of the dried pine tree.
Feathers, sheets, a cold desire.
Rain
fell & unexpectedly.
Three Images
I.
The room was lit
when I lost
you.
II.
Ants have drawn a waving black line
from the glue round the letter
to last night’s crumbs on the table
to the wide open door.
III.
Mouldy light.
Feuilleton
I fell in love with a sweet-lipped
Bitter-eyed
girl from Balkh.
Every night she dreams of
the moon & the blankets
on white roofs
or her bathing
in the green pond full of flixweed
there
a black but blind fish
sighed at the fate of my sweetheart.
I had nothing to do with her strange
sweet & bitter girlish dreams.
The passion of her body whiter than jasmine
was enough & kisses on those flower-scented lips.
Yet so many years passed over
me, the black-hearted careless youth.
The moon & the sheets are gone
with cob roofs
& the green pond full of flixweed,
my Balkh of Bamyan
with roofs whitened by the moon’s gaze.
I sigh & sigh.
Little Prince
I have a little castle
out of town
on a hill.
You are my beloved,
more beautiful than
your earrings.
Those earrings, genuine emerald
safe in their golden jewellery box.
When you were leaving
furtively
I saw you put them under my pillow
& walk away in the distorting, misty, blurry mirror.
I wish you were my little castle
with your earrings
or instead of the little castle & those earrings
only you stayed with me
with your little salmon ears
whether in a crystal ball
or in an island of stone
silent
in that other one thousand nights and a night.
Notwithstanding his spare output, with only two volumes of poetry, Diary of House Arrest (Rūznama-yi tabʿīd, 2003) and Blue Bicycle (Ducharkha-yi ābī, 2015), Hasan Alizadeh (b. 1947, Mashhad, Iran) has left a poetic signature on modern Persian poetry distinguished by lyricism and colloquialism. Alizadeh embarked on a literary career initially as a short story writer, and cultivated his writing talents alongside the notable Iranian novelists Reza Daneshvar and Ghazaleh Alizadeh in the literary circle that developed in their hometown of Mashhad. Since the early 1990s, Alizadeh has focused mostly on poetry. In Alizadeh’s poems, a labyrinthine memory, structured by the intricate architecture of old Iranian bazaars and mosques, continually revises itself in spontaneous narrations of love and death.
Kayvan Tahmasebian & Rebecca Ruth Gould have developed a long-standing successful collaboration as translators of Persian poetry into English, most recently of Bijan Elahi's High Tide of the Eyes (The Operating System, 2019). Their translation of Elahi's “Icarus” was recently featured on the website of the Academy of American Poets, and their translation of Elahi's “Birthplace” has been featured by Poetry Daily.
Kayvan Tahmasebian is a poet, translator, literary critic, and the author of Isfahan's Mold (Sadeqia dar Bayat Esfahan, 2016). His poetry has appeared in Notre Dame Review, The Hawai’i Review, Salt Hill, and Lunch Ticket, where it was a finalist for The Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts in 2017. With Rebecca Ruth Gould, he is co-translator of High Tide of the Eyes: Poems by Bijan Elahi (The Operating System, 2019). https://poets.org/poet/kayvan-tahmasebian
Rebecca Ruth Gould's poems and translations have appeared in Nimrod, Kenyon Review, Tin House, The Hudson Review, Waxwing, Wasafiri, and Poetry Wales. She translates from Persian, Russian, and Georgian, and has translated books such as After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019).
