Alireza Roshan
Five Poems from 'The Book of Absence' in Persian and English
Translation from Persian by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach
شعر
اگر میگویم
یعنی
یارم نیامده
When I write
poetry
it’s a sign
my beloved has not yet come
چیزی نیست
که مرا سرِ شوق بیاورد
جز تو
که تو هم نیستی
Nothing exists
in which I can find solace
except you
who never existed either
ماهی
چگونه انکار کند آب را
چه کند شیشه
در آماج سنگ
جز شکستن؟
What fish
can dispute water?
What can glass do
targeted by a stone
except break?
یک فنجان چای
با تو
خاطره شد
هر فنجان
بی تو
ادرار
A cup of tea
with you
became memory
Every cup
without you
became pee
عطرت
زودتر از تو
آمد
تو زودتر از عطرت
رفتی
Your perfume
came in
before you
You left
before your perfume
TRANSLATORS’ NOTE
Alireza Roshan was born in Tehran in 1977, where he worked as a journalist, heading the Books Desk at Iran’s most popular reformist daily newspaper. Around 2008, he began publishing his poetry daily online, on sites such as Google Reader, Google+, and Facebook. In so doing, he gained fame as “a poet without a book,” yet he’d deny claims to being a precursor of Instapoetry. Erès published a French-Persian edition of his poetry in 2011, Jusqu’à toi combien de poèmes, with a second printing in 2013. In Tehran a selection was published as The Book of Nothingness. The selection here is his first publication in English.
To date his books in Persian include: Becoming You, Soveyda, The Dot & 19 Other Stories, Fade, Us, A Little Book of Love, Cage Poetry, Moonstone, and Leyli’s Shadow. Michel Manasse noted in European Journal (Brussels) that Alireza Roashan’s poems remind him of two classic Persian poets: Omar Khayyam and Sa’adi. Evident in his work are a Persian literary modernism, a Persian literary humanism that embraces studies of Western literature, and a Sufi perspective. He now lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. @alirezaroashan
Poems and poetics