درست وقتی انتظارش را نداری
درست وقتی انتظارش را نداری
به سراغت می آید
در پارک
در کتابفروشی
یا همین جا که حالا من ایستاده ام
عشق به همین راحتی
از پیراهنت بالا می آید
و همچون شال گردنی
زمستان را کوتاه می کند.
It Arrives
It arrives
when you least expect it -
in a park,
in a bookshop,
or right here where I'm standing:
love wraps round you
just like a warm scarf
banishes the winter
It Visits You
It visits you
When you don’t expect it at all
In the park
In the bookshop
Or right here where I am standing
Love climbs up your shirt
So easily
And like a scarf
Shortens the winter
The main problem we faced in translating this poem was in how to resolve the final image. In Alireza’s literal version he writes that ‘Love climbs up your shirt’. In pragmatic, concrete English, this sounds like a potential assault, and so we spent a long time trying to find a way of conveying the idea of love entering the body and warming it, eventually settling on it wrapping itself around you.
In the original Farsi, none of these poems has a title. Because of the way our website is set up, we’ve had to use the first line as the title for each of them.
Sarah Maguire, Workshop Facilitator