A great collection, two of the poems
Homeless by Azita Ghahreman
In my fist I take a handful of earth.
In a corner of my soul,
lies a landscape of lonely palm trees,
where the rain never stops falling
and the moon hangs upside down.
Is Home still a place
in the atlas,
green borders and turquoise veins?
When the wind has taken my house
my lands
my horse
my light,
when I had to flee barefoot, when I lost even the roof over my head,
my husband in a dark valley,
my sons entrusted
one to the Tigris,
the other to the Euphrates,
where, then, is Home?
Other than in the corner of my memory
in that ruined halo which – clapped out, collapsing, quiet
from those twisting, turning roads – you carry
half in your heart
half on your back.
Freedom by Azita Ghahreman
Even when you are no longer here
you sit there, opposite me,
the light burning beside you.
So how did those big white sails
become little paper handkerchiefs,
or change into bruised waterlilies?
Time hatched as a tiny yellow ant
and nibbled away at my fingers.
Oh, the scent of your tender young blush,
the colour of the raspberries
you picked, red, a searing red
and the books the fire consumed -
are ashes scatter to the wind.
Even when you are no longer here
you stand there, opposite us,
you hold up a light in the darkness,
and you call us by our names.
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