Modern Persian lyric
Day by day, the censorship in Iran becomes stricter. The young Iranian poet Leili Galehdaran has therefore chosen to send her third collection, Sinior to the Swedish-located publisher Baran. If she had tried to get it printed in Iran, the book had, with necessity, been a totally different kind of poetry collection. Here we publish two texts representative of her style—modern poetry, influenced by classic Persian tradition.
The Knight
He bent over my lips
and spoke confidentially to the life growing in my womb:
You are the master of the house now
But during the season of Seville oranges
the house was grenades and a rain of bombs
Instead of him they handed me bubbles
that the shark’s cold snout could see
and an oil-stained manuscript
Bubbles that the shark’s cold snout
could see
and an oil-stained manuscript
was all I got for him,
for he who vanished without a trace
Oil burning in a wide circle
in the river Shatt al-Arab and in my heart
The Knight I sent to the front lines
came back torn to pieces
I live between Don Quixote and Hamlet now
who is calling out uncle to his father
And you brother
do not look at me
as if you see in me
a woman from Baghdad
………………………………………………………………………………………
Falcon
Wings, a Chador in the wind
In vain
again
So many inside me
Penguins
Ostriches
Partridges
And Chickens
