‘I am not immune’ is a poem every lover of reading will appreciate. Spirited and entertaining, it is, really, a love poem to books, which – just like love – are hard to resist falling for. We were of course very conscious of the need to clarify that ‘I am not immune’, first published in the early 2000s, is not a pandemic poem, which is why we decided to avoid using the original’s use of words related to ‘vaccine’: ‘vaksin’ in Farsi, a loanword from French. What the group really enjoyed was retaining the poem’s light-footedness, as exemplified by its short lines and our opting for the springboard-like feel of ‘Then’ instead of ‘After this’.
Kostya Tsolakis, Poet-facilitator
Additional Notes:
– This poem is from Bahareh’s second book of poems, published in 2003. – »خدا خواب تازه تری برایم دیده است« که در سال هشتاد و یک توسط نشر »نیم نگاه«
– The punctuation on is a little erratic – the full stops and exclamation marks at the beginning of the line are meant to be at the end of the line.
– Note that in Farsi, the active verb is always at the end of the line – so the full meaning of a line may sometimes only be revealed several lines later; e.g. “read” in the first 3 lines:
مدت هاست
It has been some time [that]
دیگر شبها
No longer / anymore, at night
کتاب نمیخوانم
I do not read books
– Both the word “vaccinated” (vaksiné) and the word vaccine (vaksin) in Farsi come from the French (and are said as they are in French) but vaksiné is not a verb here, it becomes a verb in conjunction with “I am not” (nistam)
– L1: “It has been some time” is the conjunction of two words – “period, duration, term / feeling of time” modat (مدت (in plural (ها (+” to be/is/has been” (h)ast (است (so the first line is in fact one word, signifying “it has been some time”
– L2: digar (دیگر = (any longer or anymore / shab-ha (شبها = (nights
> so time is stretched between L1 and L2, which both also serve to lengthen the time before we know where this sentence is going
– L4: khaab (واب ِ خ (alone means both sleep and dream.
– L5: aashofte (آشفته = (distress, disturb
– L6 & L12: aashia’ (اشیاء = (is a plural; objects or things, in the sense of physical ‘stuff’ – L12: To clarify my literal translation: it is objects being entrusted with the editing / wordsmithing of words; in Farsi words is qualified by ‘only’, which makes it hard to write literally without interpreting more
پ چ ِچ ) pech pech 7:L –
ِپ = ( whispering to someone; an onomatopoeic word, but also a form
of communication that presumes a specific audience
– L10: “with my mind” is made up of mind + the possessive “(a)m”
– L11: jalase (جلسه (is a meeting or a sitting – this workshop could also be a جلسه – L13: sepordan, to entrust/deposit, the verb at the end of this line is used in a number of expressions such as to memorise (to commit to memory), to bury (to entrust to the earth), to die (to entrust your soul)
– L18: sar be havaa ( به سرَ وای ِ ه ( translates literally as the French tête en l’air but has a meaning closer to confusion (than the French whimsical)
لِنگار) velengaar 18:L -ِو (is the conjunction of vel and engar
– L19: goosh mikonam (میکنم گوش = (I listen. The verb goosh daadan, literally translates as “to give an ear”
– L22: ketabkhane (کتابخانه = (bookshop, translates literally as house / place of books – L22: montasher (منتشر = ( to spread, but also means to publish, circulate. From the ن/ش/ر root Arabic
