Three Poem by Mehrdad Fallah

Mehrdad Fallah comes from Northern Iran. He was born in 1960 in Fashoo Poshteh – “a small village . . . five fingers away from the Caspian”, as he writes in his autobiographical poem ‘Let’s get some fresh air’ – somewhere between Langerood and Lahijan in the province of Gilan. He discovered his love of reading and writing poetry in his teens at high school.

I have heard

They have made such mayhem you can’t hear your own voice, right?
I have heard they have pulled the curtain of sand
run from the desert’s hand
pouring onto the streets

They say they’re walking tall
no one is hand-cuffing them, is it true?
Is it true that lies have grown wings
flying from town to town?

Why don’t the crows
descend on the wires with their scissors?
Why isn’t the sacking of Mecca in the year of the elephant repeated?
Where is the trumpet?

They say the earthquake has gone to sleep beneath these streets.
Why doesn’t it wake up? Hello!

With these electric torches

There is nothing new
in the hand that ties this light bulb
to the peak of the mountain

This window from the street
picks up fresh names
these droplets that at this very moment . . .

Anyway with these electric torches
one can even catch a tiger

Wait a minute!

Tomorrow
will wake up with another pair of eyes

This snow

This snow is crying out for a crow
the blacker the better you write
pick up a fistful of stones too
or enough to blind
all the people

Look at the crowing!
Look what havoc they are wreaking

But even if a thousand crows arrived
this snow would not be melting
Hey kids! This snow
will close all the schools

Translated by Abol Froushan

Published on International Poetry Archive