O' WINEGIVER!
Pass around and offer the wine
For Love is so easy to fall in
Yet, So difficult to carry on

 

Breeze at dawn,
Perfumed with musk of the beloved's hair
Ignites wild fire
In the heart of the lovers 
                

Under night's cover waves breathe
Fear, whirlpool's crash and pull.
How can those freely laid ashore
Come to know the burdened will?

 

Serenity is lost to all who hide
Locked in the beloved's arms
When the bells loudly toll
"Pack up, my dear, move on!"

 

My life has been drawn
From willfulness to ill-repute
How can one conceal

Secrets that leads us to gather?

 

Stain your prayer rug
With red wine spills,

----------------------------------

Be yaad-e Ahmad Shamloo, Shaaer-e Naamiman

The Gap
by: Ahmad Shamloo

Translated by: Ahmad Karimi Hakkok

To be born
on the dark spear
like the open birth of a wound.

To travel the unique exodus of opportunity
throughout
In chains
to burn on one's flame
to the very last spark
on the flame of a reverence
found by the slaves
Thus
thus red and coquettish
to bloom on the thorn-bush of blood
and thus tall and proud
to pass through the scourge-field of degradation
and to travel through to the extreme of hatred ...

Oh, who am I speaking of?
The living with no reason, we are
conscious to the reason of their death, they.

 

----------------------------------

 

So Did We...

Once upon a time
a moment,
a year,
a century,
a millennium ago
so did we stand here
on this planet,
on this soil,
for a brief instant,
just like now,
in the silk of the gloom,
in the cotton of the sunshine,
in the wide, vast balcony of the moonlight,
in the strings of the rain,
in the eaves of the squall,
in the bridal chamber of joy,
in the siege of grief,
lonely with ourselves,
lonely with others,
united in love,
united in song,
full of life,
full of death.

***

So did we pass
on this planet,
on this soil,
just like you,
in a flash of a few years,
from this very point at which you're standing now,
happy or sad,
light-legged
or heavily-loaded,
free,
or captured.
So did we, yes,
once upon a time,
yes,
yes,
so did we,
once upon a time.