زمستان که بیاید The Boat That Brought Me

زمستان که بیاید

زمستان بیاید

  شکل خودم   می شوم 
 کتاب های دورت آتش گرفته اند
 یاسمن در خواب ها    آهو می دود
سر به کوه می زند 
کوه را به سادگی بغل می‌کنم
درسینه      جا می شود 
 
دیدی ترسی نداشت
قواره ی سنگ ها 
 
از افتادن   بالا  که می رویم
دریا   اهلی تر می آید
قلاده اش را گرفته ام
 

پس  مرا با کلمات نزن

شکنجه نده     
تنت را به صخره نکش
تا شکل پلک‌های خونی    بمیرم 
 
زمستان     کوچه ای صاف
 انتهای همین خیابان  که  بپیچی
و سال ها
همین اسب سیاه  رم کرده‌اند
با  انگشتت  که بشمری
 
زمستان که بیاید
از هر   دو سو رفته‌ایم
یکی  مرا گم می کند
با آن یکی    پیدا می شوم 
اما  باید  نمی ترسیدی
 و می گفتی 
چرا به سینه ات  چاقو  فرو کرده ای
تا آدم ها  در آینه  فراری شوند .
 

The Boat That Brought Me

Behind these eyes that look like mine 
old names are fading away, the past lies crumpled in my clenched fist -
a coppery bird in coppery wind, 
this vast place has covered me from head to toe.
 
I am not stripped of word and thought 
but sometimes what I want to say gets lost
like a moon smudged with cloud, or when I splutter on a drink.
My tongue trips up when I speak of that journey 
though the blood in my veins felt the truth of death. 
As I traced my footsteps through the tracery of my old language 
Summer whispered to me
and my frozen fingers began to put out shoots
even as I began to love the cold ebb and flow of tides. 
 
Sometimes I miss 
the boat that brought me here,
now that I am witness to the icy eyes of a Swedish winter, 
under these tired old clouds,
while that suitcase still holds a patch of the sky-blue me.
 

Notes on the literal translation:

*Lines 7 – 10 literally translated word order:

Sometimes words in my coughs
And the foamy moon in the glass
Get lost

** Lines 16 – 17 literally translated word order:

waves, like/in the manner of beauty, would come like love
and then would remain [the literal words used here are: sit once again]

[1] This is the image of a foamy drink and the implication is that the poet is choked up and can’t get her words out, so they’re lost as they would be in the foam of a drink

[2] The meaning of this is that she can’t speak the words she wants to speak or say the poems she wants to say

[3] This is referring to a type of writing or calligraphy, and she’s saying that she will draw her footsteps in this manner – I will forward you examples of the type of calligraphy

[4] An image of cold frozen eyes, the image that Sweden’s eyes are like winter

[5] The image of carrying a piece of her country’s sky in her suitcase.

Elhum Shakerifar, Literal Translator

Original Poem by

Azita Ghahreman

Translated by

Elhum Shakerifar with Maura Dooley Language

Farsi

Country

Iran