Visiting Poet: Armen Davoudian on Fatemeh Shams

Headscarf

Around our throats tight like a chain — this headscarf;
in our hands loaded like a gun — this headscarf.

Each strand of our hair can stoke a revolution;
burn the symbol of our pain — this headscarf.

It isn’t Islam but a fabrication,
lies and an empty refrain — this headscarf.

Deprivation and dependency,
soul’s opiate, it rots the brain — this headscarf.

We stand by our sister’s blood; a battle-flag
lifted against her killers’ reign — this headscarf.


W for War

I wasn’t a helmet
I wasn’t a boot
I wasn’t a bullet
I wasn’t a tank

I wasn’t a commander
I wasn’t a private
a minefield, barbed wire
I wasn’t a fort

I was a piece of a photograph
in the left breast pocket
over the warm blood
of a soldier’s burst heart.


This Is Not a Poem

It’s a fistful of blood, splattered
on mute papers on the capital’s newsstands.

It’s a kind of throwing
the sudden throwing of rebel girls from the roofs of the side-streets of Revolution.

This is not a poem
it’s the forced confession of an eyewitness
her tongue worn down by the narration of successive shots.

A fat worm crawls through this poem
and swallows the termites from the faces of words
tortured words buried under a bloody heap.

This is not a poem
it’s the guts of a ten-year-old who dreamt of inventing the Rainbow God one day
it’s a chain of tattered bodies throbbing in nameless graves
cut hairs
scratched cheeks.

When midnight strikes the words will begin to violate each other
they will draw guns on each other
tenses present and past will be taken hostage
bullets will mark the confusion of adverbs of time and space.

This is not a poem
it’s the wounded body of a fifteen-year-old festering from successive rapes
it’s the severed head of a singing girl whose words were crushed in her throat
it’s the mauled chest of a captive laborer who laughed at his torturer till the last blow

This is not a poem
it’s the story of a murderer who brings home fresh bread every night with the blood money of rebel poets

Before sunrise the corpse of these words will be on the hands of these white pages
one by one they will fall into eternal sleep with fattened insects in a mass grave

This is not a poem
for weeks words have been hung up by their feet
the hands of light and metaphor chained to iron fences
and water denied to the dry throat of song … and denied … and denied
like us these words were unarmed
and their fists were full of stones
and their bodies naked as the day they were born from the womb of the mother tongue

This is not a poem that runs in my mouth
it’s the convulsions of a tortured order that runs wounded and naked in the streets
and falls to the ground at the newsstands.

Poem and Stone

The fragment of a dead volcano in my pocket
I walk to the end of endless frost.

Yesterday, a hand in my hand
but today only the struggle
of a tongue at the end of my fingertips
talking to stone.

In the distance, smoke rises and settles.
Ember under ash
a volcano speaking in the mouth
a molten current of words
a brilliant hell —
that is poetry
scratching, immortalizing
the frigid face
of bottomless exile.


Tonguelessness

I’ve brought a mirror to see which of us is more dead.
Let’s speak in words that are past their expiration date
in tongues that are each more foreign, more eloquent than the other.

I’ve brought a mirror to breathe on and check if we’re alive.
Let’s speak in the seasick accents that we know
about forgotten names
in tongues that we don’t know.

I’ve brought a mirror to see in what tongue, at what time each of us drowned.
We are the shadows on the ocean floor
turning a mirror on our own tonguelessness.
Over the waters we crossed
and to the waters we shall return.



Translated from the Persian by Armen Davoudian



Reprinted with the permission of the translator. All rights reserved.