دوباره مرد سفر خواهم شد I Will Become a Traveller Again

دوباره مرد سفر خواهم شد

گره کفش ها را خواهم بست

خواهم گذاشت ناخن ها بروید به آوارگی

و موی زنخدانم انبوه شود

چون انبوهی این بامدادها

که در میان من و مرگی زیبا قرار گرفته است.

به مرگ زیبای خویش نزدیک خواهم شد؛

چون زایری غریب،

در میان صورت ها خواهم گردید

چون پرنده ای که روی چندمین درخت جهان غروب می کند

هنگامی که آخرین ستاره

در یک سبد سیب می افتد

آنجا در یک بامداد.

I Will Become a Traveller Again

I will become a traveller again.

My boots laced up,

I will let my nails go uncut

I will let my chin sprout a bush of hair –

like the immensity of these mornings

that stand between me and a beautiful death.

As I near my beautiful death

I will wander among faces

like a homesick pilgrim,

like a bird falling from the nth tree of the world

as the last star sets

in a basket of apples –

there, early one morning.

I will become the traveller again (First Line)

I will become the traveller again

Will tie the shoe laces

Will let the nails grow wandering

And my chin will become a massive bush of hair

Like the massiveness of these mornings

Which is placed between me and a beautiful death.

I will approach my beautiful death;

Like a homesick pilgrim

I will promenade among the faces

Like a bird setting on the first tree of the world

When the last star

Falls down into a basket of apples

There, early one morning.

This poem is written in the persona of a Sufi mystic, a wanderer who relinquishes earthly ties and routines in order to wander freely wherever life takes him.

Again, we changed only a handful of words in Alireza’s literal version. In the second stanza we changed the order of the second and third lines to bring them closer to English syntax by putting the simile after the verb. One word in Persian is difficult to translate in English; in his literal version Alireza translated the fourth line of the second stanza as ‘like a bid settling on the first tree of the world’ whereas, as he explained in the workshop, this word means the last in an infinite sequence – which in English is closest to a term first used in mathematics ‘nth’.

Sarah Maguire, Workshop Facilitator

Original Poem by

Mohammad Bagher Kolahi Ahari

Translated by

Alireza Abiz with The Poetry Translation Workshop Language

Farsi

Country

Afghanistan

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