"narration of the history within the calendar of betrayal"
The Poem: Narration of the history within the calendar of betrayal To her: Neda Agha-Soltan (death: 2009 in Tehran)
Translated by: Sara Alavi-Kia
In the labyrinth of your body, I was protesting in silence on your bruised streets on the footprints of the garbage-men that every morning washed away the wounds and kisses so that I would always see myself alone. my nightmares expire on your body but in poetry nothing has expiration date it stands face to face to the word with a handkerchief wrapped on its face neither teargas nor the new Chinese armors could block the stones from landing in Tienanmen Square It stands face to face to the word to touch your body as much as the guards’ gear suits you. You can send hundred word-garrisons out to the street that the poem lives in between the silence of words in turmoil between the distance of “smile” and “you” in the tremble of your body before the touch of my hands that don’t conquer you they bare you from camera, speaker and the news from courier, crier and the news from word and the news
It is shining the pouring rain the creek that runs the red apple that drifts away. a word passes by your tongue and a dark image runs in the streets. blood is dark in your veins. Hallaj’s ash is sprinkled over Dejleh(s) of your body and a black flood swallows the wandering apples. Smile! let me soak my shirt in Dejleh perhaps my new men’s odor salvages the city.
Olympus was dark all the numbers all the letters were dark black snow was falling the storks were not getting home. in the dark your fingers were stumbling over the dark letters , the invisible waves were appearing the wounded deer on my shirt. your voice was in Hell and Hell was inside a snake’s stomach. I was biting on the wandering apples so the snake delivers and the sin of your voice evoke the colors the red flowers and the fire.
In heaven I only knew the names elevator was coming up and I was descending in verbs you were passing through the doorway and the suffix would stick to the objects the verbs were being tensed in first-person singular, in second-person plural in past and future the elevator was coming up and the earth’s orbit was shifting I was in the equator I was in the pole with you. The elevator was going down and I was in the silence within the words listening to the homeless sounds the shaking of Shibli’s hands while touching the red of the flower the weeping air at the moment of pitching Hallaj’s silent clamor at the moment of hitting or shouting of absent third-person at the moment of granting in the warmth of your kisses.
Could you not have said “I’m fine, everything is fine” that you wouldn’t dig more mass-graves? Couldn’t you talk about the burnt piano and the sound of helicopter that you wouldn’t deny the Holocaust at least? once the poem steps on the street, all the adjectives disappear It is blocked ahead. you are force to walk back in between the narrow blurred streets that you have forgotten their cross walks precipitous, you dip your finger in the ink jar erasing “we resist” of the walls that you used to be able to lean against once and now they collapse because of the force of your rushed hands It doesn’t get dusty the houses are empty the old burnt piano is fallen in the street, soundless, it doesn’t understand the touch of your hands it disintegrate under your fingers and its mute notes scatters in your black and white sunset black white your red boots flees in the silence of the street
in between the distance of word and object the spiders weave web the webs of times, have covered your mouth the corpses of wandering pronouns drop on my mouth, when I kiss you. I kiss you and my melted words become shoes which you wear you put on a new fragrance. I dream of corpses every night that fall down from your mouth to my abyss restless sounds that have no resurrections In exile. exile, is a barrel of acid When your army gets near to the city the moon sinks in the well and I decompose in language my language to words and the words decompose to sounds that cannot cross the phone lines I rot on the web on your mouth and the moon emerges on a woman’s throat whom I have never kissed.
It was windy, the howling wind I didn’t want to meet with her in the picture frame I didn’t want to flip through the pages of the photo album to see the eyes that cannot smile the windows were slamming into one another I didn’t know how many streets was I away from her. In the darks and lights of the anecdotes in the flipping through the photo albums I had seen her with a gun and cartridge-belt when she was whirling a red flower in hand tearing page by page page by page the wind slamming the doors I was gathering the petals in the album I was lying down naked spreading the petals all over myself the wind was blowing, it was howling they circled around her she was staring at the moon red, that was rising on her throat on Amir-Abad Street at five o’clock in the afternoon ”no! I don’t want to see her let the moon come” dirt was covering her moonlight face was covering the photo albums
They were many, coming back from the silent protest from exile and the wind, all night had scattered all the petals in the city.