About the translator: Born in London to Iranian parents, Niloufar Talebi received a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine, and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She studied theater with Jean Shelton and Cyril Clayton and has produced and performed nationally. Her translations have been anthologized and published in Two Lines, Poetry International, CIRCUMFERENCE, Agni on-line and Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she is the guest editor of the Spring 2006 issue of Rattapallax. She has presented at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in NYC, The New School, The National Arts Club, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Asia Society, the New York Public Library, Theater Artaud, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Actor’s Theater and Intersection for the Arts. She created “Midnight Approaches“, a DVD of short films based on new Iranian poetry, as well as “Four Springs” and “ICARUS/RISE“, multimedia theatrical pieces also based on new Iranian poetry. She is the recipient of translation prizes from the International Center for Writing and Translation (2004), the American Literary Translators Association (2005), the PEN/New York State Council on the Arts (2006) and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize (2006). She is a member of ALTA, MESA and PEN American Center. BELONGING: New Poetry By Iranians Around the World, which she has edited and translated is due in Summer 2008 (North Atlantic Books).
SHAKEN!
Permission to speak, Sir!
If the bull slipped
If the rooftop dropped
Would we always die under all the steel beams?Teacher stirred his face
Peeled his hands from the pit of his pockets
And the sky sat on whatever grade it was.Crushed desks!
The lessons that fell out of the children's hands!!
And the walls, what they did not dream for the people!!!A little hand crops up from the rubble
And a single finger speaks!!Permission, Sir!
May I rise up?Ali Abdolrezaei
Love is Lemony
Now that you draw the pink veil
Off my face
Love is this very lemon
That goes lemon lemon to the orangeLashes and neck, long
Lashes and neck bent,
Lashes back, neck askewMy head cockeyed out the nook
Over the shoulder, behind sight
Shoulders like square houses
Childhood doodle housesWe stand facing each other
Two mad souls
Neck to neck
Shoulder to shoulder
Lashes and neckAnd then
A bit bent
Bend a bit to roll over
Let me blaze on your shoulder and eyes
Your eyes that kiss kiss wet my lips
Your eye that kisses wets my lips
Your eye that plunges
Into the furrow and once again we see
Nothing and coil like vine
And whirl in noise and raptureCome! Come!
If you draw the soft pink
Aside
Love is this very lemon
That somewhat...sour...leaps...lemon lemon...to the...orangeZiba Karbassi
Night
Midnight approaches in Texas
And in New York midnight has passed
A new day dawns in Sweden.
It is only in the City of Angels
That night will not forsake me.I clasp my arms around myself
Close my eyelids
And cast myself into the night
Like a lone rock.
Maybe in Texas
It will knock on a bedroom window
Or land on a rooftop in New York.
But the world is round
And the heavy loneliness of this night
Sits only on my soul.Time has turned its back on me
And the earth
Like a black well
Has spread its mouth open
Under my feet.I let myself cross all borders
And spin like a meteor
Around myself.
But suddenly
The soft ring of a call
Brings me back to earth.The day has not yet
Approached noon in Esfahan*
And my mother
Who is clipping my father's nails
On the balcony
Has heard the sound
Of a rock
Plunging into the courtyard pool.Majid Naficy