The Poem of Course Notes
Original & Translation, from the Persian, by Farshad Sonboldel
The name of the street is gunshot,
The name of the street is death,
The name of the street to you,
Your ears will erode from fear for the young ones who well up around the tears of their classmates,
and gnaw on your name, under their breath
The name of the street is sorrow that creeps onto your face and under your brow,
Say the name of the street, and rub it across your slashed throat
and warm your beloved’s lips and flag
Write a letter to your brother, tell him your shy cellmate
neck swelled with pride, rising above the wound cascades from the stool
My beautiful child sweet girl dear poet brother,
Poems cannot be poemed I may split my mouth open,
To let a few lines splash on the wall and the pole behind me
Sweet girl, you bloomed, and tossed a twig from the sapling of killing
from your flank into the watchtower
A verse reached the very top and read:
I write in abstractions and a friend’s blood,
as a form of retaliation for Shadyakh Prison, turns into an epistle
If the machine gun is a branch of sour cherry plums
salted by blood on the torn edge of a slit skirt,
with every child who dies,
a thousand emerge from the mouth of a wandering whale.
From afar, the machine guns said:
“Look to Iran
and embrace the wind.”
We all tie our blood letters to our heads,
to the scarred wall, afraid.
And we repeat the name of the street
watching ripe dates emerge from their defiant eye sockets.
And the bride of Revolution Square hennaed the walls with her hands.
We saw them take the whip back to the cell leaving all those mothers alone in a room with the smell
of their own children until dawn.
We lined up in Evin Heights to see
you kiss your brother until he left for the airport, lost.
Know that these sour machine guns are the branches of a cherry plum tree you place on his chest and
shoulders and chew:
It’s all these mother fuckers’ fault
I yelled to the person behind me,
“I’ll go see my mother by the roadside” I picked her up she was getting cold slipping out of my hands,
I left her at the station to smolder
and wrote on her ticket:
It’s all these mother fuckers’ fault
It’s all these mother fuckers’ fault, where else can we write it now?
On the base of the watchtower?
On the cotton gauze in the nose of my poet friend? who they followed to Turkey and stabbed, wrapped in a blanket and threw out the window?
On the butt of the rifle?
On a bottle of nonalcoholic beer and a bit of hemp cloth?
The name of the street is Gunshot,
Your name is Horror,
Your name spills from the bridge and agitates the road.
In the brief conversation we managed to have with him, I said,
Dear brother, I read your letter,
They won’t stay long,
I know because my wife is a sea of blood,
and I am on a quest for Red Sulphur.
نام بیرون شلیک است
نام بیرون مرگ
نام بیرون بر تو
گوش تو از ترس جوانانی خواهد ریخت که دور اشک همکلاسیشان حلقه زده‌اند
و نام تو را زیر لب میجوند
نام بیرون غمی‌ست که میدود توی صورت و زیر پیشانی
نام بیرون را بگو و بکش بر گلوی پاره
و لب و پرچم یار را گرم کن
نامه‌ای بنویس به برادرت و در آن بگو که چگونه آن همبندی آقات
گردن کشیده‌تر و برفراز زخم از چارپایه میریزد
نوجوان قشنگم دختر گل برادر شاعر
شعر نمیشود دهانم را بشکافم تا چند سطری از پی‌ام به دیوار و تیر ببارد
دختر گل شاداب شدی و قطعه‌ای از اصل کشتن
از بر به بالای برجک سنگ قلاب کردی
:بیتی به آن بالای بالا رسید و خواند
من انتزاع می‌کنم و خون رفیقی
به تلافی زندان شادیاخ رساله میشود
مسلسل اگر یک شاخه آلوچه‌ست
نمک زده بر ترشی خون بر لب چاک تر دامن
با هر بچه‌ای که میمیرد
هزاربچه از دهان نهنگ غربتی‌اش شره میکند
مسلسل‌ها از دور گفتند
به ایران نظر کنید
و باد را به سینه بگیرید
نامه‌های همه تنی به سر میگیریم
به دیوار ندبه ترسیده
و نام بیرون را تکرار میکنیم
به چشم میبینیم که رطب‌های تازه تازه از حدقات باز و مبارزشان بیرون آمدند
و دستهای عروس میدان بر دیوار انقلاب حنا گذاشت
دیدیم که پشت شلاق را به سلول برگرداندند و تا سحر این همه مادر را با بوی بچه هایشان در یک اتاق تنها گذاشتند
صف کشیدیم در بلندی‌های اوین تا ببینیم
برادرت را بوسه میزنی تا برود در فرودگاه گم شود
:و مطمئن شویم آن ترشی مسلسل، خوشه‌های آلوچه‌ست که میگذاری روی بر و شانه‌اش و میجوی
همه‌اش تقصیر این مادر قحبه‌هاست
به پشت سری ندا دادم
بروم مادرم را کنار جاده ببینم بردم سردش میشد از دست میرفت
ولش کردم توی ایستگاه دود کند
:و روی بلیطش نوشتم
همه‌اش تقصیر این مادر قحبه‌هاست
همه‌اش تقصیر این مادر قحبه‌هاست را کجا بنویسم دیگر
پای برجک؟
روی پنبه‌های توی بینی دوست شاعرم که تا ترکیه دنبالش رفتند و چاقو به کمرش زدند و در پتو پیچیدند و از پنجره بیرونش انداختند؟
روی قنداق تفنگ
روی شیشه‌ی ماء‌الشعیر و کنف؟
نام بیرون شلیک است
نام تو هول
نام تو میریزد از بالای پل و مسیر را کلافه میکند
در تماس کوتاهی که توانستیم با او داشته باشیم گفتم
برادر عزیزم نامه‌ی شما را خواندم
این‌ها رفتنی هستند
نشان به آن نشان که زنم دریای خون است
من در تقلای کبریت احمر
Farshad Sonboldel is currently serving as the World History and Cultures Librarian at the University of California, San Diego. Beyond his academic pursuits, Sonboldel is recognized as a poet, writer, literary critic, and researcher in both English and Persian. His Persian-language publications include two poetry collections, Metropolis (2015) and She’r-e Boland-e Sharayet (2019), as well as a research monograph titled Gozaresh-e Nahib-e Jonbesh-e Adabi-e Shahin: Tondar Kia (2016), which explores the avant-garde works of a marginalized Persian poet from the early 20th century. He has also edited a volume on contemporary trends in literary criticism within Persian literature titled “Naqd-e Irad.” Sonboldel’s forthcoming book in English, titled The Rebellion of Forms: Politics of Poetic Experimentation in Modern Persian Poetry, was published by Bloomsbury Academics in early 2024. His literary achievements have been acknowledged through awards such as the Ahmad Shamlou Poetry Award in 2020, recognizing his second poetry collection, and the National Bushehr Poetry Award in 2018.
Author’s Note:
This translated poem is a chapter from a long episodic poem titled “She’r-e Jozveh” (“The Poem of Course Notes”). Various segments of this long poem have been previously published in some Persian Literary magazines.