پدر پدران – بیست‌و‌یک شعر برای پدرم / مجید نفیسی (۸)

The Father of Fathers

        Twenty-One Poems for My Father

Eight.

The Night

By Majid Naficy

The night is half over in Texas

And it is past midnight in New York.

The day is opening its eyes in Sweden

Only in the City of Angels

Does the night not leave me alone.

I clasp my arms around myself

Close my eyes

And like a single rock

Throw myself into the night.

Perhaps in Texas

It will open the window of a bedroom

Or land on a rooftop in New York.

But the world is round

And the heavy loneliness of this night

Only returns to my soul.

Time has turned its back on me

And the earth has opened its mouth

Like a dark well

Under my feet.  

I pass through all borders

And, like a shooting-star

Orbit around myself.

But suddenly the soft ring of a call

Brings me back to earth.

In Isfahan, the day is not half over

And my mother,

Who is clipping my father’s nails on the porch

Has heard the sound of a falling rock

In our swimming pool. *

                                January 14, 2001

* This poem is also translated from Persian into English by Niloufar Talebi and published in Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians around the World edited by Niloufar Talebi as well as Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing edited by Ilan Stavans. You may watch a film based on this poem here. 

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, ۸: The Night, ۹: Visiting the Moon