Chesslike City, Tehran Poem by Rosa Jamali

You see the city in my veins fast asleep
Like the obscure web over my brain
As if destroyed the fragments of my memory.

In the morning things were perfect
Just a watchdog which is penetrating incessantly into the eyelids
Things for sure were perfect in the morning.

Signals, signals, and parasites bombarded the satellite TV!

Tehran,
Like a white sheet, stagnant on the washing hanging
Still, things are perfect,
Waves moving around me;
This wretched scorching hot sultry weather

I'm the only driver turning into the highways
Railings like parallel lines keeping us all together

Is the turning for ever?

Lack of iron and minerals,
Mercury as fast as death is shadowing the table frame now
Temperature's just dropped!

Tehran is the city in my veins fast asleep!

Railings are putting us into sleep
The ruins of the city have been left over the frame.

Done with your breakfast?
Shall we exit from the right?
The prism, turning and turning into the wind
As if our torn-up parched lips and the garments in the whirlwind

By watching I feel pins and needles in my arms
The chessboard you made
With all its dead bodies,
Surfing over the waters and waters of the metropolis!



(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY THE POET.)