für Freundlichkeit

für Freundlichkeit

Du gabst einem zu Asche-gewordenen Mann Farbe
Er raucht nur
in der Nähe von Vasen
Und er wirft die Asche auf den turkmenischen Teppich aus
 
Nacht; Sterne; Feuer; Bamyan
erinnerst Du Dich
... Der Himmel war nicht weit
 
Hier
Ein Mensch wird blass
gegenüber vom Spiegel
weil er nur ein schwarz-weißes Bild sieht
So als ob eine Rabe seine Augen geklaut hat
die Mandel Augen
Bitter
so wie ich
ich war süchtig nach Himmelblau und Du
nach einen Kaffee, der den schlaf sogar von
den Augen der Fische raubt
Du hast die Straße mit Farbe bedeckt
als sie mein schatten an dem Abend
so lang gezogen hat
dass ich schon gegangen war, aber der könnte Dich nicht los lassen
 
17 April
Asef

Translated by Anita Janassary
 

To Edward Snowden

To Edward Snowden
 
We have no place to stand
Snowden,
Everywhere is occupied by Obama’s shadow
Papers by his rhetoric jokes
There is no place to talk, to drink, to read
Everywhere is occupied
by one percent and 99 surveillance cameras
You are one person, one percent!
Just stay in the transit area of Moscow Airport
And send asylum requests to many far corners of the globe
While,
today is sunny and we are happy of the EU new member
 
Mountains are occupied by the Taliban,
Churches, mosques by Brotherhoods,
Let’s just find a way
to Tahrir, Taksim, Azadi, Tiananmen Squares....

Don't stay with me, my love

Don't stay with me, my love


You don't need to feel obliged to stay with me, my love
To put up with my miseries so patiently, my love


I am prepared to live with hate and fear of blowing up
But you, a delicate crystal cup - how could you be, my love?


Set aflame this forest facing its last bitter days
So that someday my phoenix might take wing, be free, my love!


Actually for two days now I've struggled with the thought
That I should tell you without words, but honestly, my love:


How could you ever fit into this hamlet, small and cold
When you're a city, the vast world, a galaxy, my love


O my unbelieving poem, O fruitless time, I'm just
An uncompleted letter resting on your knee, my love

This leprous age has gnawed away my face, yet even so
Your petals dance upon my eyelids heedlessly, my love 

Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska

Time is running out

Time is running out


Eight thirty two
Two thirty nine
I missed the train towards the Rhine
I missed the bus, my friend, my mum!
I missed everything, everyone
 
"German is difficult"
You say:
The world is a sentence without any Grammatik errors!
I put all my old letters
into the leather bag
I smell the skin of butterflies
 
My open arms
As wide as the window
"The world is flat", easy to run across
I look at the corner
Time is running out
I stand in "Living in the moment" to break my heart
I break time: missed the train
 
Eight thirty two
Two thirty nine
I am running out to the end of the sentence
With no Grammatik error!
 
Asef
 
May 2009- Erfurt

Terrorists speak in strange languages

Terrorists speak in strange languages


Time burst and we emerged
to begin our lives,
we tied our shoes and ran away.
The street was full of worried eyes,
we
were full of the street—
our hands have been cobblestoned
and our heart valves opened
like cheap cabarets.

I don’t know why or where or how
I put your temptation away inside a book
I don’t know why or where or how
my eye slipped on the buttons of your dress
I don’t know why or where or why
                                       my eyelid pulsed—
Now you’re gone
and life in my brain’s gray cells
is a replay of our days together.
The Sahara is expanding in my chest
and yet seven seas beyond that
acid rain intoxicates the dead
of Dasht-e Leili.

Do you remember, darling?
We were suffering
while the government in the Arg
flourished
we were suffering
and a woman in Badakhshan was dying
we were reciting poems
and a man was butchered
                                in the south.

Do you remember?
I was in Mullah Omar’s heartland
reciting love poems
I said: the prayer beads mature in the tavern
and love matures in fear.

Everything is fine here.
“No clouds, no wind, I sit next to the pool.”
Just a song is enough to complete
the Attan dance
and the looting of my father’s land
even outdoes the Mongols.

Everything is fine:
the disaffected brother
smokes shisha and cuts off ears in the evenings,
cuts off the nose so his wife
will not smell the opium
and people’s steeped brains.
He cuts off ears so that
we will be domesticated,
he is so religious
that he impregnates eleven houris every night
and in the morning, goes to the Arg
to sharpen his artificial teeth.

But I still worry
about your dress
because my eyelid pulses constantly.

My darling,
the weather is cold
and many babies are being aborted
and we,
standing in a line
of one hundred and twenty thousand prophets
are still thirsty, still hungry…but we voted.
We cannot change the world,
sing songs, and be happy;
just let me squeeze the map
into the space of a cage
so that our lands will mate.

The police say: terrorists
speak in strange languages.
I lock my tongue
even though I’ve prayed
in Persian for a thousand years.
In solitary confinement
I continually confess
and at night
when I stretch out my bones in the corner
I pray your name
seventy two times and no more.

You sit in far-off longing
and all of my roads to your arms
are blocked today
             —They say an explosion happened out your way—
Do you remember
Venice, where the Mediterranean came up
and pulled your ankle to the ocean?
I said: this is enough for the sea fairies
to find their lost way.
You laughed, what a pity
how quickly we have been lost.

My longing is so deep
that three hundred and sixty five miners
                                            have died in it.

Berlin, 26 November, 2010
Translated from the Persian Dari by Farzana Marie - February 2, 2015

Daily explosion

Daily explosion

After each daily explosion in Kabul
I write an email to you
You respond it as soon as possible, two days later
but in between
Time inflates like a balloon 
and covers my eyes
blocks my throat 
I only speak with gestures 
And read your email with fingers
after too (!) days
I collect the words from the lines
Like the debris of an explosion....
 
16 May 2015

To Lovers

To Lovers

I love the curve of those hills
That heaven for playful rabbits
That run on the first soft grass of 
Spring
 
This year the rains have come early
The sky is clear
And the Milky Way can plainly be seen
 
Let down your hair
Take off that paper moth-clasp
Let me get distracted 
And my fingers move helplessly
In an unknown direction
Perhaps the Pleiades know
Where the migrant storks are going
 
The southern air is hot and humid
One can steep tea in it and
Read the future from coffee grounds
And spread your hair to the ends of the ocean
 
Even since Brazilian coffee
The colour of your eyes dissolved in the ocean,
All the fishes have been wide awake!
 
The morning-glory tendrils climb up your shoulders
My hand twists around your neck
And from the precipice of your shoulders blade
Tumbles down
Perhaps apples fall for this simple reason that they are so in love.
 
Put on your olive shirt
Give me your hands
The sparrows of Palestine are waiting
 
Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska
 

let me go far away

let me go far away

Let me go far away
The world is not so big
My hands will find their way back to your shoulders 
Birds will come out of 
The squares in my financial management notes
Let me go out
Far away, there are birds in the darkness of the forest 
In my eyes
I will find my way back to warm arms,
With no computer, no Facebook, no e-mail, 
Just with a funny story: “And then my mum said…”
Look!
Out of these frozen hands, in the garden
Children grow, the sun gazes into my eyes
We just need one apple: not labeled, not emigrated from South Africa
We just need one apple to share the world
The world is not too complicated, too big; let's tear the squared paper –
The birds will be back.

Asef
10.08.09

Four planets in my room

Four planets in my room

Each morning this timber cherub recites a prayer for me
And the boulevard rushes behind my breaths
Sometimes I long much
To sit in a spot, befriend my shadow
From the bed of the goblet to witness the world
And four planets to dangle in my room
 
One for you so when the breeze dances
Your most unknown fragrance from the jungles of Alp, I sniff
And my heart flutters for you
 
One for the tree that wants to forms shade
And permits my steps
After every detonation in Kabul
To breathe
 
The third planet
For the passengers of southern path
So they are far from the eyes of “Mullah Dadullah”
And when the sun reaches earth’s waist
Facing four Kiblahs, in prayers they engage
 
The last planet
Must
Be nest of the sparrows
So when they gossip behind you
I take pleasure
  
Translated by Frozan Safiari

A milky bra

A milky bra

When you left the table, me and two cups
I did not hesitate to see you
From the back
 
A lazy cat licking a milky bra
fallen down from your balcony
I did not hesitate to smell your body
‘the scent of woman’ , a newborn baby
or fresh-cut grass
 
I unbutton my raincoat
to let you hear my heart beats
in close
when it rains
 
I won’t miss seeing you
even if I miss the train to Bonn
where I sell whole the day
the suicide bombers’ news
 
12 may 2012