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.
Tstrong>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
