Shahram Sheydayi
1.
In the darkness upon a piece of ice
This short play was being performed :
A tiny bit of a maiden
As tall as a thimble was dancing.
- Over that piece of ice
The moonlight of a dream with a little radius was present ?
She herself was the music to her dance, a bit, soft
So softly she was dancing
I didn't know when my eye lids fell
From where my head was broken
The blood was running and
Inside the ice moved in slow motion
The dance of that entity and the dance of blood in the ice
To catch my breath
I pull my self up;
Back to the surface
No more I know how to continue. ■
( Laughing in the Burning House, p.55)
2.
With your not knowing you have talked
With your not knowing you have been alive
With your not knowing, you have died.
Ask the time, it shall help you
Talk of the weather, it shall help you
Remember your mother's name
The shape and the image of some one
Swiftly! Start by a small thing
Colors, for example the color of yellow for example
The green, the names of some trees
Press upon a brain which is not there
Of seasons; the snow, for example
Be fast, fast
Find a thing for your being, speed up
The remaining matters may return to your mind
Swiftly! If not so
You have
Truly
Become accustomed,
To your being dead. ■
( Laughing in the Burning House, p.14)
3.
The man who was watering his garden
In a quiet afternoon
suddenly remembered
He is dead.
A second later
The afternoon's shadows and voices become one
And the continuity of forgetfulness
Swallows everything.
You have remained and are carefully watching :
There is no sign of him.
Andthis occupies my mind for a few days
The thought of them who have never existed.
For a second I wish I could take the shape
Of that man's gone wife, pass him by
The man would drop the hoist, and Run
The woman stands there to say
Twenty years…
Twenty years…
Twenty years…
Twenty years…
……………………
The woman standing there
Says nothing at all
The man in his fear and alarm touches his body
His clothes
And strives to believe.
As if two bodies of mist in movement
The two of them swim into each other.
And I remain
With a piece of paper
Which nothing
At no time
Ever happens on it. ■
( Laughing in the Burning House, p.19)
4.
The sparkle of a flash
The tanks in the streets
The Spring of Prague
The album's page is turned
Asking each other's nationality
Warsaw 1939.
The hand touching the rusted peeling iron
Do not touch the nationality of this picture
The sound of dogs midnights
Those to be executed faces voices
The sound of water in pipes
The lists the ones crossed out
Eating dinner before dying
Don't lay your filthy hand on this picture
Those sudden awaking trembling sleeplessness ashtrays
To feel having electrical shock in remembering them all
To be a soldier at daybreak at nightfall
Having a cigarette in between lips in a black and white picture
Decomposed dead bodies in a black and white picture
The march of armies in a black and white picture
This lady in this picture has painted her eyes black in a black and white picture
The defense comity of vagrants in a black and white picture
The defense comity of refugees in a black and white picture
The defense comity of executed ones in a black and white picture
The sun is rising in a black and white picture
The day is absurd in a black and white picture
The sun is setting in a black and white picture
The night is absurd in a black and white picture
The sound of water in pipes
I'm cold in a black and white picture
Burning sensation where blisters were in a black and white picture
Hasn't betrayed any one in a black and white picture
They'll kill us all in a black and white picture
Good morning Mr. Brown in a black and white picture
Have you checked my bank accounts? in a black and white picture
I'm cold in a black and white picture
Give him your blanket in a black and white picture
Who isn't asleep yet in a black and white picture
Call the guard tell him this one is dead in a black and white picture
Touching rusted iron in a black and white picture
I understand you in a black and white picture
Who knows how to offer him a prayer or something in a black and white picture
Don't wake them up only the two of us are awake in a black and white picture
Have you anything to light up so I close his eyes in a black and white picture
Darkness in a black and white picture
Rage in a black and white picture nervousness in a black and white picture
My blood is boiling up in a black and white picture
The last of I'm cold in a black and white picture
The last of calm down boy in a black and white picture
It seems as though in a black and white picture
Only the two of us in a black and white picture
We have remained alive in a black and white picture
The sound of water in pipes
I'm afraid to sleep in a black and white picture
I'm afraid I'll die if I sleep in a black and white picture
Does it make a difference any more in a black and white picture
Where were you from in a black and white picture
Does it make a difference any more in a black and white picture
Bring your hand closer in a black and white picture
It is not my hand in a black and white picture
It is a dead man's hand in a black and white picture
Does it make a difference any more in a black and white picture
The last calm down in a black and white picture
The midnight's atmosphere in a black and white picture
The fear of talking in a black and white picture
The sound of dogs in a black and white picture
Now what if only one of those two in a black and white picture ■
( Laughing in the Burning House, p.87)
5.
To whom does it belong
This voice within me?
Why am I always frightened to speak
So surprised by my own voice?
It is such a hard task
To fully realize that the air in a poem is chilly
And to be able to feel the piercing coldness in some one's voice
The place where the freezing started.
Burying those who had the power to freeze
Drives one insane
Some one came stood up and shouted
No more
None of you has the right to touch
The chopped up pieces of these bodies
The pieces of bodies which
been pushed out of excessive wakefulness
No, you have no right to touch the coldness which in itself
Had the power to put an end to everything.
Gradually taking the coldness in not giving it out
And, suddenly become frozen.
This has the exact concept of explosion in itself.
It began by a voice, the voice of some one chilliness
The piercing chilly voice or the coldness?...No more
You can separate them from each other
And this piercing chilliness this voice this coldness
Became so close to itself finding its own self so that like bubbles
Everything of the world exploded in its head
And without knowing suddenly stepped into the great wakefulness
Then this piercing chill this voice this coldness
Began to sediment inside the dreams
And no more has been separated wakefulness from dreams . ■
( Laughing in the Burning House, p.78)
6.
They all come to talk in our tongue
We are absent
They are absent
And the talk does not begin.
They all come to once again believe in the living
We are gone
The concept of vitality
Has been suspended
To shake up a thing
To insist on taking it back
No one has remained to grasp a thing
No one has remained to put a date and endorse
The man's darkness
We had by writing these things walked out
No one has remained to give
The nothing back to the nothing in the nothingness
Some one was saying: all of us
Some one else: all of them
And some one closed the door
And left that place forever.
Some one was saying: we wanted not to speak
Some one else: they wanted not to ask for any thing
And some one with a thing which he held in his hand
Was still painfully scratching lines on the caves' walls ■
( Laughing in the Burning House, p.22)
7. Winter's warmth
My son!
Have you written your homework?
As I turn my head
My whole face becomes wet with tear
I start running away
- My son doesn't write his homework
Looks at his hands
Mine eyes.
- I ditched my wife in my heart -
- My son! Don't write your homework
Write down your hands, your eyes
That little boat
Which your mother has left in you,
Write down we are sad and the sea is far away
Write down for its own sake the sky is sky
We become dead inside each other
Not in the earth
Not in the sky.
Write down your father is afraid of the sky
Of the city
He is afraid of the streets of the living
My son we are not sunshine
We are flash and blood and bone
And "hope" and "love" and "flight" and these are all
Winter's warmth
Season by season the wick becomes lower.
- I Write so that my son doesn't write : -
- We are not alive
We don't know how to
We are a house in the sea
Forced to keep a lamp lighted from afar
My son your father is not a man :
He is a boat his fathers had carved
Till one day they sail in it to the seas
And he has broken it a piece at a time
And with each piece, with each piece
He has laughed aloud aloud
With these pieces
We must build a fire
- Your mother in my heart is getting colder. -
We did break our boats in pieces
The sea has also come to its end
We are too insane
To be able to be alive. ■
(A fire to another fire, p.85)
8.
***
Up there
We have
A worn – out sun
Which kindly scratches everything.
We have gathered our hearts
To lend her to attach
To her old heart
So that us all together
Can come to terms with old things
For the sake of being more in love
For the sake of being more scratched ■
(A fire to another fire, p.95)
9.
At the beginning
The sun was telling the tale
The moon
Rapturously were all ears
Later on
The Earth's residents
Began to talk, too :
- Rocks and trees
- Waters and …
No one was
Listening. ■
(A fire to another fire, p.94)
10. Purification
I heartily wish to go back from every body's eyes to my hands
And write down a thing for every one:
Today in which I realized I am the Earth's little brother
My eyes are looking at everything with certainty.
The water takes part of my fire and rushes forward
I have calmed done
Calmed down
So much that like a mother I can
Put to sleep in each side of my bosom
A sun and a moon and tell them
Endure endure
We must continue.
So calm I had become
That tigers have turned tamed.
And for gazelles' sake
Tie up white handkerchiefs to the trees
- Shyness is kissing every thing -
I look at every body's eyes in a way that
The apples on the branch become unable to resist
And in each fall of each apple on the ground
A flash of sparkle comes to their eyes
And joy swells up in them layer upon layer
And I must keep smiling till a warm light
Puts the colors in a cradle and takes them back.
So calm I have become that I feel
Every thing has been washed.
I breathe happiness in my lungs and my eyes
And I feel no bird has ever flown as high as man .
Every body's eyes must be congratulated
And become naked and climb up trees' vessels
Dance dance dance
Joy and dance
No more I dare to speak
As if every thing been awakened in this second
And a pity it would be the utterance of a voice
Write down:
One day for living is sufficient, too. ■
( A fire to another fire, p.92)
1. My childhood is always dreaming
A dismissed gravity spins in me
Blocking the way of dreams
Filling its infertility with pain
My heart longs for a folk song
For a road that leads to my city
For the trees on our sidewalks
For the apricots from the surrounding villages
For looking at old farmers
In the mountains
With old hands and old coats
Longs for their pipes…
I miss crying in my own city
I was always scared of growing up
Of not knowing the people that I once knew
I become a foreigner
after every movie
I am afraid of every ending.
Of having a photo album
Of memories
Of the quotidian logic of repetition
I am afraid of the setting sun.
Of the fact that time can pass
That the past remains behind
That a rock is always a rock
And that the earth has no face
Of my dreams sticking to my body,
To my voice
I am afraid of my sudden awakenings.
That the sea is strange
That the moon is strange
That a terrifying news is always on its way
I miss hearing all the sounds
Even for never reaching you.
I need to talk so badly
To talk. ■
(A fire to another fire, p.19)
2. The words that will remain from us
Perhaps it is because the earth has asked me something
That I am now awake
Or it is because a story is born within me
That I now do not know how to put on my socks
And that I cannot find my hands
The image that wants to keep me alive,
Is now small, small
_Incompleteness is looking for a place within us_
Mother, is a word that is sleeping in the next room
I am suspicious of everything
Of the light that I just turned on
Of the pictures on the wall
Of the person I buried in the cemetery a week ago
Maybe I have entered higher dreams
Other worlds
That I hear your voices
In a few days
And for hearing your answers
A spot beside me, will forever remain empty
I am suspicious of listening to conversations
Of sitting next to each other
I am suspicious of all the distances that have now become closer
Today, we celebrate incompleteness
Tomorrow, a new week will pass.
Knocks on the door
There is a person behind the window
I always think…
The words that will remain from us
Will experience a strange insomnia
a strange insomnia.
We will leave behind,
the keys to crying
for the murderers that are on their way. ■