Saturday 23 March 2019

'THE ONLY RESIDENT OF THIS HOUSE IS THE GLOOMY HAWK'

Me
huddled here 
And my red cells flee
The game ended in nill
Never-existed memories on the road
on sale! 


It was a man
Heavy
On my eyelids.

No, it won't be over
All the mirrors show me the same
A locked room
The stone's falling down
Single-handed and barefoot
The day is just the surface! 

That parted memory
Tossing and turning 
Sing me lullaby
Is this the memory loss
Or I'm wounded? 
And nobody knows
The drizzle of salt
On that large basin.
The days are sick! 
Can you feel my pulse? 
And am I a memory joined to your veins?

Tired
Although they're playing the drums
As loudly as possible
But I'm deaf! 

The only resident of this house is the gloomy hawk.





(TRANSLATED  FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY THE AUTHOR)

THE BULL YEAR



1

1
rat is penetrating and squeaking sharply in my veins
Tigers have been silenced
Their claws clinging over the snow gradually...

2
It was doomed and dark
Like a metal shape
And slippery over the ice
It was badly dark and shadowy.

The creased moon has walked on my shade
I've buried the fish
The memory has been hanging from the ceiling.

This has existed
For centuries
Dubbs a puppet
And mimes a gesture.

The avalanche
Broken latticed twigs
Maybe an origami
Forgotten over the years
And gone, ...

3
The glass coffin behind the window
Time is not passing away
The shadow on the pot.

Who's shivering on the window...

I've buried yesterday
My fingers have been numbed in pins and needles
Gripped through the time.

No end for the clouds
The lines are totally dark
The mirror has been walking in me.

It's chewed the buttons of my dress.

A flock of crows flying
The earth is a worn-out corridor,

A mass of ants invaded my house
It's been raining for seven hundred years
A blind's coming
And this year is a bull year...

4
The rabbit moving on the left
Had intercourse with the snow
It's been a bloody intercourse,
The rabbit flowing in my veins.



Rosa Jamali

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY THE POET) 

'UNRIPE GREENGAGES'



I'm unripe greengages
It was a necessity
That I was just born to be a flavour.





(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY THE POET)

'LIKE A HANGED PITCHER'


Like a hanged pitcher,
No drink is pouring off me
It's natural to get numbed gradually.

Pig-headed seashells!
This boasting sky,
Is an anchor
which has fallen on my lap
This dizzy sky!
The moon's been cleared
A shadow's coming after me
Barefooted on my dreams
You used to run!

Enjoyed? !
Numbed? !

All my veins are connected to this land...

Like a hanged pitcher
Joyful of this sky
One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole.

And it was over!
The Gulf was over!
You waved hands.

Like a hanged pitcher,
It's simple!
I lost the game
And gambled away...




(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY THE POET)

'SUPPOSE THAT I'M INEVITABLE'



Suppose that I'm inevitable
Even the veins of my right hand
Cross you from the drafts.

On my smooth nails
The breeze 
Which is not from the sky
Is curving you
Either the veins of my right hand
Is running short 
On my pulse.

Rolled along my fingers
Vanished 
Not repeated for ever
For the second.
I'm a half 
Since the first.

The veins of my neck cross you all.


If the warmth of my ten fingers
Seized on your torn pieces of breath
All is over
With the dead-end alleys
all in oblivion.




(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY THE POET)

The Flintstone



The Flintstone(Translated From Original Persian To English) - Poem by Rosa Jamali

Block No.1:
A whole nation has created the kindling
Which owes you desperately
But it hasn’t been specified
Whether it’s the flintstone
Or A firestorm?

Block No.2:
A piece of my happiness is in debt with the flintstone
You’ve turned to the rocks
But it’s for the flintstone.


Block No.3:
I’m in debt with the flintstone
The whole world is in debt with the flintstone


Block No.4:
It has cast a spell
For all your desires
Behind the railing.

Block No.5:
I’m the mother of this flintstone
I’ve nourished it
I’ve shed tears on it
If the world is on fire
I’m the one to blame.


Block No.6:
I’ve betrayed the heaven above
God is disabled by it.


Block No.7:
And since then people have taken the vow of silence, …

'Dating Noah’s Son'/ 'Making coffee to Run a Crime Story' / Translated from Original Persian to English by the Author: Rosa Jamali 

Chesslike City, Tehran - Poem by Rosa Jamali

You see the city in my veins fast asleep
Like the obscure web over my brain
As if destroyed the fragments of my memory.

In the morning things were perfect
Just a watchdog that is penetrating incessantly into the eyelids
Things for sure were perfect in the morning.

Signals, signals, and parasites bombarded the satellite TV! 

Tehran, 
Like a white sheet, stagnant on the washing hanging
Still, things are perfect, 
Waves moving around me; 
This wretched scorching hot sultry weather 

I'm the only driver turning into the highways
Railings like parallel lines keeping us all together

Is the turning forever? 

Lack of iron and minerals, 
Mercury is fast as death is shadowing the table frame now
Temperature's just dropped! 

Tehran is the city in my veins fast asleep! 

Railings are putting us to sleep
The ruins of the city have been left over the frame.

Done with your breakfast? 
Shall we exit from the right? 
The prism, turning and turning into the wind
As if our torn-up parched lips and the garments in the whirlwind

By watching I feel pins and needles in my arms
The chessboard you made
With all its dead bodies, 
Surfing over the waters and waters of the metropolis! 



(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY THE POET.) 


Algae Between My Fingers - Poem by Rosa Jamali

A shortcut to an unknown spot (a crime that I've revealed)

With your permission
We'll assess whether this unknown sign is correct
the crime that I've revealed
they've exiled me to an unknown spot
and it's no distance from being underground*

Speak, say something, confess!
I came into the world on the day you stroked my shroud
my constant entertainment was a dark loophole
my evidence a page from my sister's identity card
they ascertain the strength of gravity the moment a stone
doesn't sink in water
Speak, say something, confess!
the crime that I've revealed

The crime that I've revealed

That's great!
I don't know if it's four o'clock or five
if today's Thursday or Friday
if it's October or November
if it's winter or autumn
minutes are halted, forbidden
I'm guilty of murdering someone
it's not the first time
it's not the last time
it's the thousandth time they've put me in prison
I have thirty seconds
for years my shadow has followed your shadow
my hair is a tangled spider's web
there's algae between my fingers
I won't look into your pupils any more
you've spilled cold milk on my bones
you've shot a volley of bullets into my pupils
for thirty five days I've been in love with corpses
though this is an inaccurate account
That's great!
his eyeballs are cloudy with pneumonia
my breasts feel crushed
they give me a blind man's stick
and looking at the calendar is forbidden
That's great!
A woman is screaming, vertical and horizontal, at eighty degrees on the clock
from the welts the stick makes
a woman is screaming round the clock
a woman is screaming, a few seconds, a moment of surrender, it's ninety degrees
a woman is screaming and the gashes and a wall-clock, one hundred and eighty degrees
a woman is screaming / it's half past midnight/ the circle's complete
it's three hundred and sixty degrees

a revolver's diagonal shape on the wall
the smell of blood's sent me crazy
Speak, say something, confess!
it looks like bad weather's coming
the world is a short woman who's been slashed down
Speak, say something, confess!
they've exiled me to an unknown spot
a slab of rubble drops into water
and it's no distance from being underground*

a woman is screaming …
a woman is screaming …
a woman is screaming …



This piece which is an excerpt from a long verse drama has been translated by Dick Davis; British Acclaimed poet & translator of Ferdowsi(The Book Of Kings) / TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN

The Clock Cell



Something happens to die
And the sunlight which has been soaking is wet and obscure
If I carry on the lines
The frozen object which has been captured in your hands will drop
Otherwise, the day has come to an end.

Void
When I get home; staring at all those cubical shapes;
Standstill current of water
And the sunlight which is never damp
On the blank sheets of writing
bursting into tears over old sheets on my bed.

The elements
Its essence has been painted by my blood
The rain of cats and dogs on my field
The moon is encompassing the land!

Here with the frostbite on the iron post,
I left the time on the river bank
Time was a whim slipped away from my fingers
The moments have been cleaned and cleared.

The wall has turned blue
Me and the black gown
Have taken the flow of the river.

It's a calf death breast-fed.

What is it?
Sediments on a neutral background
It could be in a different colour
It's been many days since I started walking on the rope
The creased moon is hanging down the ceiling.

Blizzard
A flimsy stone
The frostbite on the window glass
The bridge has fallen down
Silence on a metal tape
Ending to a blind full stop.


(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)

Monday 4 March 2019

I left my name on the Land I stepped


A collaborative project with English painter Charlie Calder-Potts to illustrate this timeless narrative and its themes. She has taken people from the ‘here and now’ on the streets of Iran and placed them within the context of Persian Poems of Rosa Jamali.












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Sunday 3 March 2019

Knotweed - Poem by Rosa Jamali


I've turned to an annual plant, shielded and armed, from the genus of hollyhocks and broad leaves

Whole five-thousand-year history is turning over my head

It was the moment that you were buried with no shroud

And I'm the weeds and icicles of this land, …

Had been climbing over the flames, it was a black ladder, burning my sole feet

It was the moment that I had chopped my heart, you had sucked my blood in that woundless bowl

Had been growing like a wildflower, had been living for millions of years

In Syriac over my body:

Nail-shaped herbs had written some letters.

I'm the genius of thorns with wounded heels of thousands of miles travelling in the oasis

My blistered feet, weary and my parched lips

Shattered by the mountain ranges I had been fighting with my claws

My roots are extended with the fluent liquid in the vessels

Lilacs had grown over my arms and now I've turned to the ivy as if burning in the fire

I left my name on the land I stepped, …



And who's this weeping human child, lamenting two thousand years in my arms? Still weeping? ! Always weeping? !

I've been raising this child for six thousand years

I've grown this Persian hero to send him to the battlefield

Breastfed him

And he has grown out of my eyes

This extreme light which has blinded me….



(TRANSLATED From original Persian to English by the Poet) 

The Biennial of Asian Poetry






Rosa Jamali is a Poet, Playwright, Translator and a Poetry Scholar

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