Ziba Karbassi

Blood Home Dance (Mother Land Dance)

When the blood-home is here, just here

When the blood-home has the smell of your body

Don’t pull me away from myself

                                    don’t take me anywhere away from myself

When the smell of my love’s body spreads through the air of the room

                                                and the room becomes drunk

And me and the memories and the shadows walk drunkenly

                                                            with each other

                                                                        and die a little

                                                                                    in each other

Dance crazily, dance, blood-home dance,

                                                blood   home   dance

Migrant memories will come back again

Piece by piece memory of the craziness of being apart comes back again

And the cold and the homelessness come to this room

                                                under this roof

                                                            to take me away again.

Memories of my grandfather, uncles and aunts

Me and my father doing the round loop of Shogholle

                                                                           and Golistan *

The tears of my always grieving mother in the afternoons of summer

That soft thyroid full of constricted sobbing & fingered by winter bones

Hey, Hey, Hey : all these

                                    vagrant memories!

Don’t take me from myself

                        don’t take me anywhere at all out of myself

When the smell of jasmine and pomegranate and grandmother, of vanilla and

quince and auntie and saffron, and tangerines and uncle and thin flakes of

nougat, thin flakes, come : it is the hug of my poem, baklava garden,

                                                Tabriz-heart, Shams-breath,

                                                            poem-embrace

When grandmother is dead, and auntie too, and uncle

                                                is dead,

and pieces of you are also dead inside me,

why do your chest and my breath still

        smell with life ?

Don’t let them take away my breathing

                                    don’t let them cut down my breath-line

And the hair on your chest which is soft

                                    and my head that always falls there

My always peaceful homeland, my always may-time meadow

Let me stay here

                        just here

Blood-land embrace, poetry-embrace, mother-embrace,

poetry-heart, dear love :

            don’t let me be pulled away from myself

                        don’t let me be pulled loose

          from here at all.

* Shogholle & Golistan, in this instance, are the names of

      parks in the poet’s northwestern birth-city of Tabriz.

[The above poem is below in Farsi. To hear, click on the English title above.]

زیبا کرباسی

-رقص «اَتن»*

وطن
وطن

وطن که همینجا باشد وطن

وقتی بوی تن تو داشته باشد وطن

مرا از خود نبرید

از خود به هیچ کجا نبرید

وقتی بوی تن معشوق بپیچد و مست کند اتاق

من و یادها و سایه ها تلوتلو چرخی بزنیم درهم و باهم

بمیریم کمی از هم

رقص بی قرار وطن کنیم وطن

و یادهای سرگردانی دوباره بیایند

یادهای تکه تکه از جنون جدایی دوباره بیایند

سرما و بی خانمانی بیاید در این اتاق زیر این سقف

تا مرا ببرد

یادهای پدربزرگ عمو دایی

من و بابا و چرخ و فلک بازی و «شاه گویلی» و «باغ گلستان»

گریه های مادر سوگوارم در عصرهای تابستان

هی اینهمه اینهمه اینهمه یادهای سرگردان

مرا از خود نبرید مرا از خود به هیچ کجا نه

وقتی بوی شب بو و انار دانه و مادربزرگ و به و ریواس و عمه و زعفران و نارنج و دایی و نقل نقل می دهد بغلت

شعر بغل جان

باغ باقلوا تبریز دل

شمس نفسم

وقتی مادربزرگ مرده باشد

عمه مرده باشد

دایی هم

و تکه هایی از تو نیز زنده مرده باشند در من

پس چرا بوی زندگی می دهد هنوز سینه ات

نفسم

نگذار ببُرند نفسم را

نگذار ببَرند

مرا نگذار معشوق

مرا از خود نگذار

و سینه ات این دشت اردیبهشت

که سرم سوی آن خم می شود

چه خوب است همینجا بمانم

وطن آغوش شعرآغوش مادروطن شعروطن معشوق شعر

نگذار مرا ببرند

نگذار مرا از تو به هیچ کجا ببرند.

--
* رقص «اَتن» رقص ملی افغانستان است
spring 2000 london

 

***

To Hell with It

The end of no ending

And from the inmost ache of the brain of a young inventor a stone jerks free

And the earth breaks up

                        in tiny pieces

                                    tiny tiny pieces

                                                as a voice shattering in its semiotic stricture

                                                             must in the mouth of language –

                                                                           become a poem!

And the shoulders of earth tighten in trauma

And the tree-monkeys hopscotch from this to that side of the dream

                                                                                    flying

The knees of the earth splinter

The shoulders are cracked apart

The ss-ss-sso of sob is snapped off from sobbing, and where are the shudders ?

The voice of hh-hhha’s hurled apart from laughter, and where are the shivers ?

And wingless flightless birds are flocked between the cracks and

the voices of weeping.

To hell with it !

Let the sky spit its stars on your face

To hell with it !

Let the sun turn its heat from you

                                                To hell with it !

And the mountains vomit intestines over you

                                                                   To hell with it !

To hell with it you bird hurled in the snow for hiding

                                                            To hell with it !

Leave this earth, this ripped-open woman, leave her,

            you-mother-fucker : you-oedipus-of-no-future

If I were a hug

If I were a hu-hug, 

                                    If I were a hug I would hold this wrapt

so tightly O

                                                Until all of it healed over …. If I

                                                                        were a hug …

Translated fr. Farsi by Stephen Watts and Ziba Karbassi

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