December 25
Friday, December 24, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
زمستان
زمستان
مهدی اخوان ثالث
سلامت را نمی خواهند پاسخ گفت
سرها در گریبان است
کسی سر بر نیارد کرد پاسخ گفتن و دیدار یاران را
نگه جز پیش پا را دید ، نتواند
که ره تاریک و لغزان است
وگر دست محبت سوی کسی یازی
به اکراه آورد دست از بغل بیرون
که سرما سخت سوزان است
نفس ، کز گرمگاه سینه می اید برون ، ابری شود تاریک
چو دیوار ایستد در پیش چشمانت .
نفس کاین است ، پس دیگر چه داری چشم
ز چشم دوستان دور یا نزدیک ؟
مسیحای جوانمرد من ! ای ترسای پیر پیرهن چرکین
هوا بس ناجوانمردانه سرد است ... ای
دمت گرم و سرت خوش باد
سلامم را تو پاسخ گوی ، در بگشای
منم من ، میهمان هر شبت ، لولی وش مغموم
منم من ، سنگ تیپاخورده ی رنجور
منم ، دشنام پست آفرینش ، نغمه ی ناجور
نه از رومم ، نه از زنگم ، همان بیرنگ بیرنگم
بیا بگشای در ، بگشای ، دلتنگم
حریفا ! میزبانا ! میهمان سال و ماهت پشت در چون موج می لرزد
تگرگی نیست ، مرگی نیست
صدایی گر شنیدی ، صحبت سرما و دندان است
من امشب آمدستم وام بگزارم
حسابت را کنار جام بگذارم
چه می گویی که بیگه شد ، سحر شد ، بامداد آمد ؟
فریبت می دهد ، بر آسمان این سرخی بعد از سحرگه نیست
حریفا ! گوش سرما برده است این ، یادگار سیلی سرد زمستان است
و قندیل سپهر تنگ میدان ، مرده یا زنده
به تابوت ستبر ظلمت نه توی مرگ اندود ، پنهان است
حریفا ! رو چراغ باده را بفروز ، شب با روز یکسان است
سلامت را نمی خواهند پاسخ گفت
هوا دلگیر ، درها بسته ، سرها در گریبان ، دستها پنهان
نفسها ابر ، دلها خسته و غمگین
درختان اسکلتهای بلور آجین
زمین دلمرده ، سقف آسمان کوتاه
غبار آلوده مهر و ماه
زمستان است
Winter
Winter
By: Mehdi Akhavan Sales (M. Omid)
Translated by: Mohammad Rajabpur
Thrusting their heads in their collars,
They won’t greet you back.
No head is raised to greet and meet friends.
As the road is dark and slippery,
The eyes could hardly see.
If you stretch your hands in affection towards someone,
As it is freezing cold,
He will unwillingly take out his hands from his warm pockets.
Exhaled by the warmth of the bosom,
The breath becomes a dark cloud
And rises before your eyes as a wall.
What do you expect your far or close friends to do,
When your breath behaves as such?
My fair Messiah!
Ah, aged Christian in grubby garments!
Oh … it is bitterly cold!
Best wishes and Good luck to you!
Open the door and answer me!
It’s me, your night-guest, a dejected bohemian,
It’s me, an infirm kicked stone,
It’s me, the humble curse of creation, an inharmonious melody.
Neither a Roman nor an African, I’m utterly without bias.
Come and open the door! I’m desolate.
Ah, my companion and host!
Your guest of month and years
Is shivering as ripples
In front of the door.
There is no hail and no death,
If you hear a sound it is the conversation between teeth and chill.
I have come tonight to pay back my debts to you
And clear our accounts.
Do you say it’s too late, it’s dawn, the morn is at hand?
You are deluded, this is not the scarlet after the dawn.
My companion! This is a chill-struck ear,
The memento of winter’s cold smack.
The lantern of the sky, living or dead, is hidden
In the labyrinthine thick coffin of gloom, besmeared with death.
My companion! Go and kindle the light of wine,
Night is indistinguishable from the day.
They won’t greet you back.
The weather is dismal, the doors are closed,
The heads thrust in collars, the hands hidden.
The breath is a cloud, the hearts are heavy,
The trees crystalline skeletons,
The earth is dead-hearted, the sky’s vault low,
The moon and sun are hazy,
It’s winter.
Monday, December 20, 2010
My Translation of Sherwood Anderson's Story on javanemrooz.com
This translation was previously published in Barzakh Web-based Literary Magazine.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Davood the Hunchback
Davood the Hunchback
By Sadegh Hedayat
Translated by Mohammad Rajabpur
“Oh, no, I’ll never do this. I’ve to forget about it. It brings luck for other people, but for me it’s just pain and misery. Oh, no, never …” whispered Davood to himself while he was tapping his yellow walking stick on the ground and was walking with difficulty as if he could hardly keep his balance. His big face had sunk into his thin shoulders on his swollen chest. He had a dry, rough and gaudy expression on his face: thin tight lips, narrow round eyebrows, fallen eyelids, pale yellow color, and swollen bony cheeks. From a distance, one could see his white jacket which had been raised in the back. His hands were long and disproportionate. He wore a loose hat and maintained a serious countenance. All this and the way he tapped his walking stick with difficulty made him more ridiculous to people on the streets.
He had turned from Pahlavi Street into the street leading outside the city and was going towards Darvazeh Dowlat. It was near the sunset, but it was a bit warm. On the left, under the dim light of the dusk, clay and brick walls had thrust their heads into the sky.
On the right, the brook had recently been filled and here and there one could see half-built brick houses. The street was quiet and just every now and then, a car or a coach passed by which raised dust into the air, though water had been sprinkled on the ground. On both sides along the gutter, young trees had been planted.
Davood was thinking he had been mocked or pitied by other people since he was a child. He remembered when for the first time his history teacher said that Spartans killed deformed babies, everybody had turned and looked at him. This had filled him with strange feelings. But now he wished this law was practiced all over the world or at least malformed people were banned from marriage, because he knew all this was his father’s fault.
He remembered his father’s expression while he was dying. His face was pale, his cheeks were bony, his eyes had become black and had sunk in and his mouth was half-open. His syphilitic father had married a young girl and all his children had been born either blind or paralyzed. Just one of his brothers had survived dumb and crazy who had died two years earlier. “Perhaps they were happy”, he whispered to himself.
He was the only one who had stayed alive. He despised himself and all people. Everybody shunned him, but to some extent he had learned to lead a solitary life. Since childhood he had been deprived of all the sports and games played at school. He had been deprived of all the things which made his peers happy. During the recess, he sat in a corner in the school yard, kept his book before his face and slyly peeped at his peers. Sometimes he tried to do his best and wanted to gain superiority over his classmates by studying hard. Some students wanted to befriend him, but he knew that it was because they wanted to copy the answers to math problems from his notebook. He knew that they just pretended to be friends with him and in fact most of them wanted to befriend Hassan Khan who was good-looking, in shape and wore beautiful clothes. Just two or three teachers paid him some attention which was just out of pity and they even couldn’t help him finish his studies.
Now he was poor and penniless. All people avoided him; even his so-called friends felt ashamed of accompanying him. “Look at the Hunchback” the girls said which made him lose his temper. Some years ago, he had proposed to two girls, but both of them had mocked him. Incidentally one of them lived nearby in Fisher Abad. He had seen her, a couple of times and once had talked to her. Her name was Zibandeh. In the afternoon when the school was over, he used to come to the vicinity to see her from a distance. He just remembered she had a beauty-spot near her lips. He had sent his aunt to propose to her on his behalf, but she had made fun of him and had said, “Are we running short of men that you expect me become the Hunchback’s wife”. Though her parents had beaten her hard to accept the proposal, she had just resisted and said, “Are we running short of men”? Still Davood loved her and she was the best thing he remembered from his youth. Now consciously or unconsciously he came here most of the time to refresh his memories. He really felt frustrated with everything. He walked alone and avoided the crowd, because whoever laughed he thought it was at him and whoever whispered to his friend, he thought the guy was mocking him. With his brown gazing eyes and his rough countenance he would turn half of his body stiffly and look at them with contempt. On the way, all his attention was towards other people and tensing the muscles of his face, he wanted to know their opinion about himself.
He was walking slowly along the gutter and sometimes he dipped his walking stick into the water. His thoughts were wild and disorderly. Hearing the sound of his walking stick hitting a stone, a white dog raised its head feebly. It looked sick or dying. It couldn’t move and dropped down its head. He bended down with difficulty and in the moonlight, their eyes met. Strange thoughts struck his head. He thought it was the first sincere look he had ever seen. Both of them were unhappy and like rubbish had been socially outcast. He wanted to sit next to the dog, embrace it and push its head to his chest. But he thought someone might see him and ridicule him even more.
The sun had just set, when he passed through Yousef Abad Gate. He looked at the full-moon which had risen in the dark sky of this nostalgic night. He looked at the half-built houses, the pile of bricks, the layout of the sleepy city, trees, the attics of the houses and the black mountain. They passed before his eyes like dim gray screens.
Nobody was around. He could hear the stifled voice of a man singing far away. He raised his head with difficulty. He was tired and full of agony. His eyes were burning and he felt the weight of his head on his body. He put aside his stick and sat on the pebbles near a brook running there. All of a sudden, he noticed a woman wearing a chador sitting beside the brook near him. His heart started to beat fast. With no greetings, she turned her head towards him. “Houshang! Why are late? Where were you”? she said.
Davood was surprised how she had seen her and had not run away. He was so happy. He felt she wanted to talk to him, but what was she doing there at this time? Was she a chaste girl? Was she in love? After all, he had found someone to whom he could talk. Perhaps she could calm her down. “Are you lonely, Miss? I’m lonely too. I’ve always been, all my life” he dared say.
Just then the girl who was wearing sunglasses turned her head again towards him. “Who are you? I thought you were Houshang. He always toys with me”.
Davood didn’t understand what she meant by her last sentence. It was a long time no girl had talked to him and he was surprised. He saw that she was very beautiful.
Cold sweat was running down his body. “No, I’m not Houshang, Miss. My name’s Davood” he said with difficulty.
“I don’t see you. I have sore eyes. Oh, … Davood. Oh! The Hunch…” she said biting her lips. “That’s why your voice looked quite familiar to my ears. I’m Zibandeh. Remember me”?
Her plaited hair which had hidden her profile moved and Davood saw the black beauty-spot near her lips. He felt pain in his body, he was perspiring on the forehead. He looked around. There wasn’t a soul there. But he could hear the singing man more clearly. His heart was throbbing so quickly that he couldn’t breathe. Without a word, he got up. All his body was trembling. He was about to weep. He picked up his walking stick and with heavy steps and drawing his body, he set off back. “She was Zibandeh! She couldn’t see me … Houshang might be her fiancé or her husband … who knows? … Oh, no … never … I must forget her forever … oh, no … I can’t stand it any longer”, he whispered with a harsh voice.
He drew himself next to the dog he had seen on his way. He sat down, held the dog and embraced it in his arms. But the dog was dead!
September 7, 1930
Tehran
Terrestrial Verses
Terrestrial Verses
By: Forough Farrokhzad
By: Forough Farrokhzad
Translation by Mohammad Rajabpur
The sun turned cold
And abundance left lands
And in deserts shrubs dried
And in deeps the fish died
And thereafter the earth
Did not receive the dead.
The night in all the pale windows
Was incessantly raging and rebelling
Like a suspicious fancy,
And the roads
Abandoned their ends in the dark.
None thought of love any more
None thought of glory any more
And none
Thought of nothing any more.
In the dens of solitude
Vanity was born,
The blood smelled of opium and hemp,
The pregnant women
Gave birth to headless babies
And the shameful cradles
Took refuge in the graves.
What a bitter and dark time!
Bread had defeated
The miraculous force of prophecy,
Poor hungry prophets
Escaped from divine trysts
And the lost lambs of Jesus
Did not hear the dirge of a shepherd
In the wonder of the desert,
As if in the eyes of the mirrors
Motions, colours and pictures
Reversely were reflected
And as if a sacred shining halo
was burning like an umbrella ablaze
Over the heads of the despised clowns
And over the ugly faces of prostitutes.
The swamps of alcohol
Giving off a poisonous bitter vapor
Drew into their depth
The motionless mass of intellectuals
And the noxious mice
chewed up the gilded pages of books
Preserved in ancient chests.
The sun was dead
The sun was dead, and tomorrow
Was a vague lost concept
In children's mind.
They were drawing
The weirdness of this obsolete word
With a black stain
In their homework.
People,
The lapsed bunch of people
Dejected, dumbfounded and feeble
Were wandering about in exile
Under the evil weight of their corpses
And the painful desire for murder
Was inflating in their hands
Sometimes an insignificant spark
All of a sudden, from within
Shattered this silent lifeless society;
They would attack one another
Men would cut each other's throat
With a dagger
And in a bed of blood
They would sleep with
Immature girls.
They were obsessed with terror
And the scary sense of sinfulness
Had paralyzed
Their blind and stupid souls.
Always during the execution
When the hanging rope
Pushed out
A convict's convulsive eyes
They would be lost in thought
And their old and weary nerves
Would ache of a lustful fancy,
But you would ever see
These small murderers
Standing
And staring at
The constant fall of fountains.
Perhaps still
Behind the crushed eyes
Amidst the chill
There had remained
Something faint and half-alive
In whose breathless effort
Wanted to believe
In the innocence of the song of waters
Perhaps , but what an infinite vacuum!
The sun was dead
And nobody knew
The name of that sad dove
Which has escaped the hearts
Is faith.
O Imprisoned Voice
Can the majesty of thy despair
Ever penetrate into light
Through this disgusting night?
O Imprisoned Voice
The last voice of voices ...
Life
Life
By: Siavash Kasraie
Translation: Mohammad Rajabpur
Oh, yeah
Oh, yeah
Life is beautiful
Life is an eternally-built fireplace
If lit, you can behold its flame dance from each side
If not, it’s out & its being out is our fault.
Oh, I was not born yesterday
Oh, I was not born yesterday
By: Ahmad Shamlou
Translation: Mohammad Rajabpur
Oh, I was not born yesterday,
Oh, no!
I’ve lived the age of the world.
My fresh memory is the memory of the centuries.
Many a time they shed our blood.
Oh, heed
The only outcome of murder
Was the stale piece of bread on our graceless tablecloth.
The Arabs deluded me,
I opened them the gates of the tower of the ants
With my own wrinkled hands.
They made us sit on the black gallows
And they cut off our head.
We said prayers and we were massacred
Because we were labeled atheists.
We said prayers and we were massacred
Because we were labeled pagans.
Then they decided
We and our brothers had to slay each other
As this was the closest path to heaven.
Oh, heed!
The only outcome of murder
Was the rags to hide our genitals.
Your brother’s credulousness called the Turks here,
They beheaded you and me.
My recklessness called the Mongols here,
They beheaded you and everybody.
They put yokes on our necks.
They tied us to a plough
And sat on our back.
They ploughed such a limitless cemetery
That even today
The mourners’ eyes are full of tears of blood.
Oh, heed
The sad escape
From one exile to another
Looking for faith as our mere virtue.
Oh, heed!
Our history was restlessness
With no belief
And with no home.
Oh, no!
I was not born yesterday!
Goldfish
Goldfish
By: Samira Ghasemi
Translation: Mohammad Rajabpur
Goldfish! Oh! Goldfish! Dear Goldfish!
Your feet go numb in Mommy’s crystal fishbowl,
Your body’s crying out for the roughness of the rocks,
The drinking water in the fridge is potent poison for your blood,
Your little Heart’s crying out for the saltiness of the seas.
Your fins are craving for a single bubble,
Your gills … thirsty of water,
Your scales … the mirror of light,
You don’t fit in this crystal fishbowl,
Go and see the sea!
Go! Never come back here!
Don’t leave a track or a trail behind!
Your Heart is just a prisoner here,
The Heart that is sky blue.
Follow the trail of the brooks,
You’ll get to the river,
Then the Bluish Green
Will see you, will kiss you and will take you.
Dear Goldfish! This is what they call Sea.
You thought you would get used to this bowl little by little,
You would calm down in this lonely and queer place.
But truly you found out, here is just the bowl of sorrow,
The moth and the butterfly die here fluttering their wings.
They say, “A good goldfish always remains in its bowl,
Always tight-lipped beside the Koran on Haftsin tablecloth,
A good goldfish sleeps early, turns little and makes few bubbles”.
They’ve said on and on, “why do you wanna be a whale?
You can be big in this small globe.
Your way’s full of wolves, ravens and cats,
Your way’s full of hazard.
Don’t ever think of going, you’ll get lost”!
They’ve warned you of going towards the sea,
Of becoming aware, of hearing the unheard.
But Goldfish!
Don’t ever get used to your bowl!
Don’t ever get contended with a gulp of water and a piece of bread!
Don’t ever get fooled by their words
To stay in your small bowl forever,
To toss in slime forever!
Having gone, don’t ever miss your pals!
Don’t ever miss cockroaches, flies, lizards and mosquitoes!
Don’t ever miss that pal, who knew of the sea,
But never said a word of it!
Don’t ever let the sea storm make you a vagrant,
Don’t ever weep of the slap of the waves on your ear.
Don’t ever midway regret your going!
Don’t ever come back here!
Don’t ever recoil at the sight of pelicans!
Dear Goldfish!
If the sea is full of sharks and eels,
It is also full of jellyfish in many places.
If at night, the storm and the whirlwind threaten you,
Instead at midday, nowhere you can find such soothing warmth of the sun.
Don’t ever get your feet cold on the pebbles of the shore!
Oh, Goldfish! Go!
Oh, Goldfish! Go!
The sea is yours!
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