A catalog of poems is arriving in bookstores, in which the acclaimed Iranian poet translates the politics and horrors of war into the realm of poetry. The author explores the traumas of a society in which even the dead harbor hope of glimpsing a kinder world.
In Zenda we reproduce six poems from the bilingual edition of In This Late Hour (Electric Sky), by Garous Abdolmalekian.
***
Long Exposure
Today I freed the last bird,
but I am sad.
There is something
in this empty cage
that cannot be freed.
***
Fragments of Darkness
In the shadow of something that does not exist
he sits
to leaf through the pages of something that does not exist.
He wakes up torn apart
and piece by piece he sets off.
His many pieces
have finally worn death out.
His index finger, crossing the sky,
asks for permission and inquires:
What is the use of sunset
if not to sadden us?
—That’s it!
A question that is an answer
remains alive forever.
So leave it,
let it go.
***
He’s crazy,
for every time he speaks
the wall turns away.
He’s crazy,
for he continues to dig up the night
and hide the fragments of darkness
under the bed.
He’s crazy,
for he said he would leave,
but he left,
he said he would stay,
but he stayed,
he said he would laugh
but he laughed.
He’s crazy,
for he no longer distinguishes between going, staying and laughing,
and he devotes himself to extracting the meaning of “but.”
That one must be crazy
whom at dawn
they tied with a rope.
He,
whom they shot yesterday
and still thinks of escaping.
***
Project 4
Staring fixedly at the small sphere
he recalculated the counts.
There was no room for a boundless forest
nor space for an infinite sea,
no matter how endless the pursuit.
And then
the invention of your eyes.
***
Extended Exposure 5
Forget the machine gun,
death,
and think of the story of a bee
that, in the middle of a mined field,
goes in search of a flowering branch.
***
Project
Your shirt flutters in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
—————————————
Author: Garous Abdolmalekian. Title: In This Late Hour. Translation: Tea Vardosanidze Rusadze and Alfredo Gutiérrez Kavanagh. Publisher: Electric Sky. Sales: All Your Books.
BIO
Garous Abdolmalekian was born in 1980, a few days after the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, and lives in Tehran. He is the author of five books of poetry and has received the Karnameh Prize for Poetry Book of the Year and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Award. His poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish. Abdolmalekian is currently editor of the poetry section of Chesmeh Publications in Tehran and executive editor of publications for the Iranian Youth Poetry Office. He has received the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award (2003) and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Award (2006).
