یه غریبه ای
یه غریبه ای
که داری از اینجا رد می شی
با کت قهوه ای و
سیگار مالبرو
اسممو نمی دونی
منم نمی تونم اسممو بت بگم
نه اینکه یه راز باشه نه!
آخه علفای زیادی سنگ قبرمو پوشوندن…
You’re a Stranger
You're a stranger
in a brown jacket
smoking a Marlboro
passing me by
You don't know my name
and I can't tell you -
not that it's a secret:
too much grass grows over my gravestone
You Are a Stranger
You are a stranger
Who is passing by
With a brown jacket
And a Marlboro cigarette
You don’t know my name
I cannot tell you my name either
Not that it is a secret, no!
Too much grass is covering my tombstone
It took us a while to work out that this poem is written from the perspective of a woman in her grave addressing a man passing her by. The first crucial change was from ‘passing by’ to ‘passing me by’. We talked a lot about how to render that final image: gravestones in Iran are flat, whereas here Christian graves are usually upright.
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