هفت شعر در زمان ترامپ از مجید نفیسی

 

Seven Poems During Trump

By Majid Naficy

 

One: Truth and Falsehood

I read in Egyption papyruses

That Truth and Falsehood were brothers.

One day Truth borrowed Falsehood’s dagger

But lost it by misfortune.

Falsehood took the case to court,

Claimed the dagger was irreplaceable

And asked the judge in return

To blind Truth and order him 

To become the doorkeeper of Falsehood’s house.

Today, too, a false little man 

Has blinded Truth

By his repetitious denial of facts

And made him the doorkeeper of his house

And stopped journalists and scientists

Who are the gatekeepers of the house of Truth

From questioning and researching.

If you believe in Truth

Cleanse the house from Falsehood

And, as the child of Truth in the Egyption legend,

Rise to seek justice for Truth

Until his eyes shine again.

        January 31, 2017  

 

Two: Let America Become America Again

 

The America that I knew

Opened her arms to me

And placed me next to her children.

I had fled my homeland

Where my wife was executed.

A peshmerga took me to Turkey

A lawyer to France

And a sponsor to America.

Thus I became a citizen of this country.

But today,  Those who separated

Infants from their mothers

At the Mexican border

Want to remove my citizenship.

No! This is not the America that I knew

The America where French Protestants

And English Catholics migrated,

The America where German Jews

Soviet defectors

And non-European refugees took refuge.

Let America become America again*

Return infants to asylum seekers

And embrace all of her children equally.

        July 11, 2018

* “Let America be America again” Langston Hughes

 

Three: The Night Michelle Danced with Barack

Do you remember that night,

The night Michelle danced with Barack?

All people danced with them,

I, too, with my ex-wife

In front of a giant TV

In a nightclub on the corner.

Do you remember that night,

The night Michelle danced with Barack?

I let go of cynicism

Became an active citizen

And shouted with the others:

“Yes! We can.”

Do you remember that night,

The night Michelle danced with Barack?

No one knew that soon

Slaveholders would rise from graves

And spread fear and despair

With their guns and God.

Do you remember that night,

The night Michelle danced with Barack?

That night will return again

Malia will dance with Sasha

And my son Azad with his ex-girlfriend

And America will find another Lincoln.

        July 26, 2018

 

Four: This House Stinks

This house is not yours. 

Go back to your concrete tower

With its golden toilet!

The one who will replace you

Must be the leading light of this nation

Not like you, the head of criminals.

It is not long

Until the Mississippi River

Joins the Colorado

And washes off your four-year filth

Thoroughly from this house.*

Rise, oh American Hercules

Who live in the hearts of

Every informed woman and man.

Rise! Rise!

This house stinks! 

 

        May 22, 2020

* An allusion to Hercules’ washing-off the Augean stables.

 

Five: Worm

You are that apple worm which overnight

Grew into a bloodthirsty dragon

Like Haftvad’s worm in the “Ardashir Chronicles”.*

It nested in the minds of people

Drawing them to its cult.

No sorrow if in our time

Another Ardashir does not rise

To pour molten lead in your mouth

And call the people to open your castle

By setting a smoking fire on the roof.

No! This time, Instead of a hero,

The people themselves one by one

Will mail their ballots

To bring you down from your seat

And return you to your swamp.

        October 15, 2020 

* Ardashir I founded the Sasanian Dynasty in Iran in 224 A. D. He slew Haftvad’s worm before crowning himself king of kings >>>

 

Six: Tonight I Think of Trump

Tonight I think of Trump

Who sits in the White House alone

Thinking of his defeat.

He is not the Shah

Who fled the Revolution

And never returned home.

He is not the Fuhrer

Who, in his bunker in Berlin,

Put a bullet in his head.

He is an outgoing president

Who must pick up the phone

And congratulate his rival.

May the Goddess of Liberty

Give him courage to do this 

So that tolerance

Replaces hatred

And America becomes America again.

        November 6, 2020        

 

Seven: Endpoint

I am that bullet

Which Hitler put in his head

At his hideout.

I am that blood clot

Which took Stalin into a coma

In his bedroom.

I am that termite

Which gnawed away Solomon’s cane

Until his standing corpse fell*.

I am that endpoint

No matter if the tyrants

Call themselves eternal.

        January 2, 2021

* The Quran 34:14. The Bible does not have this narrative.