Translator: Dr. Abol Froushan

In the massacre of my words
they’ve beheaded my last line
and blood
ink-like
is hitting on paper

there’s death
stretched over the page

and life
like a window ajar
shattered by a rock

a new gun has finished off the world

and I
imported-goods-like
through this alley’s doors
am still the very meagre room that emigrated

I in my life who am pen-like to the lines of this meagre page
am mother
The cat’s paws are still prancing
to scare the mouse
running for the hole they filled

In pursuit of the lesson I did at school
I’m no longer Jack the lover to my Jill
I’m doing my new homework
You cross it out
And in the girl who will tumble at this poem’s end
build a house
filled with a door open like a wound
and from in between the edges of death
like a room gone from this house
lived happily
a girl
who wanting to make me her own
would throw morsels in her voice
to tease me over
to the temple of her body
for my eyes to keep whirling and whirling
to make a Dervish of me again
How the eyes
these empty sockets
in between the love-making of two are thousand-handed
How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran
Fathurt
mothurt
my brothurt!
My condition is more critical than hurt
Writing’s more emasculated than me
and London
with its hair highlights of a weather is still
sisterly awaiting

Death to stretch over my body
for life to kill me again

My heart is bleeding for the poet whose queue of words is getting longer
for the branchless sparrow who’s swallowed its twitter
for the restitution of a crow with no overhead wire
for myself
gone from the house
like electricity
I was somebody
Did the foolish thing
became a poet