My House is Cloudy | Nima Yushij | Ali Salami

My house is overcast by clouds

Permanently weighed by a pall of cloud over the earth.

The wind, broken, desolate and intoxicated,

Whirls over the pass.

The world is laid waste by it

And my senses too!

O piper!

O you enchanted by the music of the pipe,

Where are you?

My house is cloudy, yet

The cloud is impregnated by rain.

 

Cherished by the illusion of my bright days,

I stand opposite the sun

I cast my gaze upon the sea.

And the entire world is desolated, ravaged by the wind

And the ever-playing piper progresses onto his path

In this cloudy world.

©Ali Salami 2017

Morning Glory | Sohrab Sepehri | Ali Salami

Past the border of my dream

The shadow of a morning glory 

Had darkened all these ruins

What intrepid wind

Carried the morning glory seed to the land of my Nod?

Beyond glass gates of dream

In the bottomless marsh of mirrors

Wherever I had taken a piece of myself

A morning glory had sprouted

Forever pouring into the void of my soul

And in the sound of its blossoming

I was forever dying in myself

 

The veranda roof caves in

And the morning glory twines about all columns

What intrepid wind

Carried this morning glory seed to the land of my Nod?

The morning glory germinates

Its stem rising out of my transparent sleep

I was in a dream

Flood of wakefulness overflowed.

To the view of my dream ruins I opened eyes:

The morning glory had twined all about my life.

I was flowing in its veins

It rooted in me

It was all of me

What intrepid wind

Carried this morning glory seed to the land of my Nod?

©Ali Salami 2017

Love Song | Forugh Farrokhzad | Ali Salami

The night is painted by your dream

Your perfume fills my lungs to extreme

You are a feast for my eye!

All shapes of woe you belie

As the body of earth is washed by rain

From my soul you cleanse all stain!

In my burning body you are a turning gyre

In the shade of my eyelashes you are a blazing fire.

You are more verdant than a wheat field!

More fruit than golden boughs you yield!

To the suns you open the gate

To counteract dark doubt’s spate

With you there is no reason for fears

But the pain of joyful tears

This sad heart of mine and profuse light?

This din of life in the abyss of blight?

The glance in your eyes is my field

And with it my eyes are sealed

Before this I had no other image

Or I would not but you envisage

The pain of love is a dark pain

Going and demeaning oneself in vain

Leaning against people with black sight

Defiling oneself with the filth of spite

Finding in caresses venom of wile

Finding villainy in friend’s smile

Handing gold coins to the marauding band

Getting lost in the midst of the bazaar land

With my soul united you will be

From grave you will raise me

Like a star on wings decked with gold

You come from a land untold.

You alleviate sorrow’s pang

Flooding my body with embrace’s tang

You are a stream flowing onto my dry breast

My bed of my veins with your water is blest

Within a world which on darkness does feed

With every step you take I proceed

Underneath my skin you go!

There like blood you flow

Burning my tresses with a fondling hand

Flushing my cheeks with an urging demand

You are a stranger to my gown

An acquaintance with my body’s lawn

You are a shining sun that never dies

A sun that rises in Southern skies

You are fresher than first light

Fresher than spring, a lusher sight

This is no longer love; this is pride

A chandelier that in silence and darkness died

When Love did my heart entice

I was filled with a sense of sacrifice

This is no longer me, this is no longer me

My life with my ego amounted to a null degree

My lips your kisses prize

Your lips are the temple of my eyes

In me you stir a great rhapsody

Your curves are an attire on my body

O how I crave to sprout

And my joy with sorrow shout

O how I wish to rise

And my eyes with tears baptize

This forlorn heart of mine and incense perfume?

The music of harp and lyre in a prayer room?

This void and these flights?

These songs and these silent nights?

Your glance is a wondrous lullaby

Cradling restless babes thereby

Your breath is a trancing breeze

Washing off me tremors of unease

Finding in my morrows a place to sleep

Permeating my world deep and deep

In me the passion for poetry you inspire

Over my lays you cast instant fire

You kindled my passionate desire

Thus setting my poems afire.

©Ali Salami 2017

Another Birth | Forugh Farrokhzad | Ali Salami

My entire soul is a murky verse

Reiterating you within itself

Carrying you to the dawn of eternal burstings and blossomings

In this verse, I sighed you, AH!

In this verse,

I grafted you to trees, water and fire

 

Perhaps life is

A long street along which a woman

With a basket passes every day

Perhaps life

Is a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch

Perhaps life is a child returning home from school

Perhaps life is the lighting of a cigarette

Between the lethargic intervals of two lovemakings

Or the puzzled passage of a passerby

Tipping his hat

Saying good morning

to another passerby with a vacant smile

Perhaps life is that blocked moment

When my look destroys itself in the pupils of your eyes

And in this there is a sense

Which I will mingle with the perception of the moon

And the reception of darkness

 

In a room the size of one solitude

My heart

The size of one love

Looks at the simple pretexts of its own happiness,

 

At the pretty withering of flowers in the flower pots

At the sapling you planted in our flowerbed

At the songs of the canaries

Who sing the size of one window.

 

Ah

This is my lot

This is my lot

My lot

Is a sky, which the dropping of a curtain seizes from me

My lot is going down an abandoned stairway

And joining with something in decay and nostalgia

My lot is a cheerless walk in the garden of memories

And dying in the sorrow of a voice that tells me:

“I love

Your hands”

 

I will plant my hands in the flowerbed

I will sprout, I know, I know, I know

And the sparrows will lay eggs

In the hollows of my inky fingers

I will hang a pair of earrings of red twin cherries

Round my ears

I will put dahlia petals on my nails

There is an alley

Where the boys who were once in love with me,

With those disheveled hairs, thin necks and gaunt legs

Still think of the innocent smiles of a little girl

Who was one night blown away by the wind

There is an alley which my heart

Has stolen from places of my childhood

 

The journey of a volume along the line of time

And impregnating the barren line of time with a volume

A volume conscious of an image

Returning from the feast of a mirror

 

This is the way

Someone dies

And someone remains

No fisherman will catch pearls

From a little stream flowing into a ditch

 

I

Know a sad little mermaid

Dwelling in the ocean

Softly, gently blowing

Her heart into a wooden flute

A sad little mermaid

Who dies with a kiss at night

And is born again with another kiss at dawn

©Ali Salami 2017

Near A Distant Realm | Sohrab Sepehri | Ali Salami

There was a woman at the door

Standing with a body as ever

I approached her:

Her image flooded my eyes.

Speech turned into wings of passion and knowledge.

Shadow turned into sun.

 

I walk out in the sun

I was carried away by pleasing signs:

I went as far as childhood and sands

As far as delightful mistakes

As far as abstract objects

I neared picturesque waters

And trees full of pears

With an ever-present trunk

I breathed with the wet truth.

My feeling of wonder mingled with the tree.

I perceived I abutted on the throne of God

I felt a bit distraught.

Man goes to seek solace

When he feels crestfallen.

I did too.

 

I went as far as the table

The yogurt’s taste, the fresh green plants

There was bread to eat with a cup and saucer:

My throat pined for a goblet of vodka.

 

I returned:

The woman was there at the door

Standing with a body of deadly wounds.

An empty can

Kept paring away

The water’s throat.

©Ali Salami 2017

The Boat | Nima Yushij | Ali Salami

My face is withered

My boat is stranded.

 

With my stranded bark

I cry:

“I am stranded in sorrow

In this dangerous seashore

And the water is far away

“Help, O friends!”

A smile of derision breaks upon their lips

But directed at me

At my askew boat

At my tumultuous words

At my infinite perturbation

At my infinite perturbation

Suddenly a cry issues from me:

I fear but danger and annihilation

The commotion of `to be or not to be'

It is but for endangered life.”

With their mistake

I buy mistakes

From their disheartening words

I suffer

Blood spurts out of my wound

How can I dry the water?

I cry.

My face is withered

My boat is stranded

My words are clear to you:

 

One person is alone

I extend my hand to you for help

 

My voice is broken in my throat

And if voice is voluble

I cry

For your salvation and mine

I cry!

©Ali Salami 2017