پدر پدران – بیست‌و‌یک شعر برای پدرم / مجید نفیسی (۶)

The Father of Fathers

        Twenty-One Poems for My Father

Six.

That Hitler Moustache

        By Majid Naficy

When did you wear that little mustache

And why did you shave it off?

I look at your laughing eyes in the picture 

And ask myself in shame:

Did my father know that

Hitler had genocide camps?

Back then you were a medical draftee.

At night, with your friends in Isfahan,

You sat around a magic box

Hooraying the progress of the German army

In revenge against Russia and Britain:

“The enemy of your enemy is your friend”

Today, that era looks bygone:

For years you shaved above your upper lip,

That picture fades in the corner of the album

And our family

Has read the Diary of Anne Frank.

One summer, when I was eight

We went to Mohammadieh for two weeks

And, when drinking tea in the evenning

My elder sister Nafiseh

Read Anne Frank aloud to us.

There, I bought my first diary

And soon found out that in Anne’s words

Papers are more patient than people.

And you probably ask me in response:

“ Comrade!

When did you shave your big mustache?”

                                May 27, 1998

Poems

۱: Sword at the Ablution Pool, ۲:  In Temescal Canyon, ۳: Red earmuffs, ۴: Three Gifts, ۵:  Forgetfulness, ۶: That Hitler Moustache, ۷: Baghbaderan Wine