Farideh Hassanzadeh ( Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet and translator. Her published translations include : T.S.Eliot’s selected poems, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life ,by Ian Gibson ,Anthology of Contemporary African poetry, Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Women Poets of the world, Latin American Poetry in the 20th Century and the last one: Iaroslav Sefert's Selected Poems. Her anthology of Contemporary American poetry will appear in autumn.




ISN’T IT ENOUGH?


I gave up love
being satisfied with quiet of shadows
And memories.

Time was passed
moments exploded
by the rain of bombs.

At nightfall
I don’t brush my dreams any more
At nightfall
I don’t care for the wandering sun any more

At nightfall
I leave the frightened moon in the sky
to shelter under the ground .


I am neither a woman nor a poet any more.

Night by night
more and more,
I feel real.

Like bloody sound of alarms,
Like roaring anti-air crafts,
Like falling bombs and rockets,
which turns the ruins and ashes
Into the eternal reality;
I feel night by night more real
and old

so old and real that in the mirror
I see nothing anymore
But a range of empty chairs.

Oh, isn’t it enough?

What does a man need
more than a loaf of bread
a quite night
and an armful of bleak love
for giving up and being satisfied
with quiet of shadows
and memories?


THE FORGOTTEN UMBRELLA

Upon the sound of rain
she took a pad of paper, a pen
and a few words about a youngness ,
a loneliness
and a next day;
then rushed out .

Her heart
just as an umbrella
left on the corner
and was forgotten .


FALLING IN LOVE


Only the blown wind
felt
how cloudy I am
how wishful
to put my head on the shoulder of rain
and cry .

I believe you have fallen asleep
behind a window

and my caressing hand
on your grey hair
seems to bring together the broken pieces of a mirror .

But this is Fall
Fall
and love needs no reason
Love
Love



I AM NOT DARK

The rose that withers
is a wounded God:
the woman who gets old.

It seems as if,
I have to write forever
and keep out of mind
the desire for love.

Oh!
I am not dark;
this is the night
that casts the shadow.

Why not?

Some day
I will find someone
and will tell him in silence
all the words I told others in my poems
And nobody got them.

Then I will let him
hold my head in his hands
and kiss my eyes
full of tears.

Floating over the waters of dream
we will go to open the suitcase
- which we had never closed –
and will take all we need to despair
like a painkiller, a watch or a book of poems.

Then
We, he and me, will leave every thing;
everything except tomorrow
and each other.

THIRSTY DEPARTURE

Cool water
blue colour
loitering heat;

Thus and so
I prowl in the thought of you
just as a leaf
in the spirit of a tree
or Fall .

The night stone
rolls away
in the mood of crying,
and the tipsy wings of gayflies
may be the most beautiful memory
In leaflessness.

Without you
Good and Grief even
Is Evil itself.

You know?
I think of that letter
I have to write to you
and to all the world ;
I know what to write
but deeply disheartened I am.

Understanding only the seashore’s word:
“keeping aside”
from the bottom of heart
I share wandering
with both sides of all roads
***

Translated by : Mohammad Ali Mozaafarian