پدر پدران – بیست‌و‌یک شعر برای پدرم / مجید نفیسی (۲۱)

The Father of Fathers

        Twenty-One Poems for My Father

Twenty-One.

The Cypress of Abarkuh

by Majid Naficy

This cypress tree boasts 

That it is much older

Than Cyrus the Great.

Once with my father

I sat in its shade.

We were coming from Isfahan

And wanted to go to Ferdows*

From the desert.

I became an exile

My father, a forgetter

And Iran, an inferno.

Now I ask myself:

Will this cypress tree

Remain standing as before?

        February 3, 2020

*- The name of a city in Iran which means “paradise”.

Poems

1: Sword at the Ablution Pool, 2:  In Temescal Canyon, 3: Red earmuffs, 4: Three Gifts, ۵:  Forgetfulness, 6: That Hitler Moustache, ۷: Baghbaderan Wine, 8: The Night, ۹: Visiting the Moon, ۱۰: Secret, 11:  A Red Rose for My Father, 12: The Soul Bird of Father, 13: In the Name of Father, 14: Magic Lantern, ۱۵: The Family Koran, 16: Khomeini’s Visit, ۱۷: Death in the Sea, ۱۸: Stomach Ulcer, 19: Hat in the Wind, 20: Languages of My Father, ۲۱: The Cypress of Abarkuh