Wednesday, 18 October 2023

Five Poems by Farideh Hassanzadeh

 



ISN’T IT ENOUGH?

 

I gave up love

being satisfied with quiet of shadows

and memories.

 

Time was passed

moments exploded

by the rain of bombs.

 

At nightfall

I don’t brush my dreams any more

At nightfall

I don’t care for the wandering sun any more

 

At nightfall

I leave the frightened moon in the sky

to shelter under the ground.

I am neither a woman nor a poet any more.

Night by night

more and more,

I feel real.

 

Like bloody sound of alarms,

Like roaring anti-air crafts,

Like falling bombs and rockets,

that turns the ruins and ashes

Into the eternal reality;

I feel night by night more real

and older

so older and real that in the mirror

I see nothing anymore

but a range of empty chairs.

 

Oh, isn’t it enough?

isn’t it enough?

What does everybody need

more than a loaf of bread

a quite night

and an armful of bleak love

for giving up and being satisfied

with the quiet of shadows

and memories?


 

Pen Pal poem


We never met each other.

I never saw you in pyjamas,
brushing your teeth just before sleep,
and I never got a glimpse of your soaking head
out of the shower, when you’d yell:
“I forgot my comb, will ya please give it to me?”

I never saw you limbering up
early in the morning
or at night, when you were snoring
and water was oozing out
from the corner of your lips.

I never had the fortune
to iron your shirt
or serve you a bowl of hot soup
and cover you up at night
when you caught a cold.

In the cold of midnight,
our bodies never made each other warm
but, imbued with fabulous lies and dreams
our letters and poems
more beautiful and innocent than pure truth
announced us husband and wife formally.

And our children were the love songs
immortal in the rains of bombs,
invulnerable to the curses of gods.


 




A woman’s desk


Can you find somewhere

for a woman's desk?

 

In the middle of the sea, for instance

where this boat needs only two oars

to sail into the sea;

 

or on a green branch

where this little bird will start singing

and learns flying from one branch to another

 

Can you find somewhere

for a woman's desk,

in the East or in the West 

except but a home in which

a desk can be a coffin

a heavy burden to carry

on her husband’s shoulder?

   


That Dark Side of the Cities



They are the only ones

who are free.

 

They stay

on that dark side of the cities

where the most remote stones

rest on their bodies,

covered with dust.

 

When news is broadcast at regular times

by beautiful international women

wearing colourful clothing and gaudy smiles,

the dead hear nothing but deep silence,

as if all the international languages

are without sound.

 

Even when the bombs start to rain

on far and near cities,

they are safe in their eternal shelters

while their souls are suffering

from the long-lost dreams.

 

The only voice that reaches them

to shake their bones

is the tortured screams

from solitary confinement,

just like the graves

where the freedom is condemned to survival.



 


Posthumous poem: Memories of a dead woman from walking in her city


 

Of the fleeting world

I liked the sight of geranium pots

on window sills of houses

and the wind’s kiss on compulsory hijab

In search of my tresses).

 

I dearly loved to walk under the raindrops

overflowing with hope of finding my lost half.

I hated the campaign posters for political candidates

and the framed pictures in offices and banks

poking me in the eye like a nail

 For, they saw time as the footprints of kings and presidents.

 

I never tired of seeing clenched fists;

waves coming from the end of the sea, at times

to wash away the footprints of everything

 but freedom, peace and love

to color the life blood in the vessels of death.

 

 

** hijab

/hɪˈdʒɑːb,ˈhɪdʒɑːb/

noun

noun: hijab; plural noun: hijabs

1.              a head covering worn in public by some Muslim women.

o                the religious code which governs the wearing of the hijab.

 

Farideh Hassanzadeh is an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist. Her poems appear in the anthologies Letters to the World, Contemporary, Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She is the author of Eternal Voices: Interviews with Poets East and West, and The Last Night with Sylvia Plath: Essays on Poetry. In addition, she has translated: Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson, Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry; Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva; Women Poets of the World; Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry; Selected Poems of Iaroslav Seifert; Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life; Blood of Adonis by Samuel Hazo; The Beauty of Friendship: Selected Poems by Khalil Gibran; Selected Poems by Blaga Dimitrova; The Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry; and The print of cat’s paw in the life and work of poets, novelists, politicians, painters, religious men, actors, physicians and scientists. 


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