End of the City Map 1 Poem by Farhad Showghi

The city map doesn't stop. Extroverted bush
and boxfires, marches across beets for onions
and cedars. We try something, know the names
but a landscape comes. Whoever answers promptly
goes over to the neighbour's garden and becomes a
snowball shrub. In an uncertain way,
left to its own accord. No window steps out of line
to offer more. No one takes the houses, the
yards before the houses fishing. Midday-
water seeps towards sunbright sycamore tree tops.
More lightly than the hand out of the jacket pocket,
a great distance slips out. The hand opens up. The
equanamity of a traffic artery. That soon falls back
on thinking.

Translated by Brian Currid