Farzaneh Khojandi
(República de Tayikistán, 1964)
Nacida en la provincia Khojand remota de Tayikistán en 1964, Khojandi es ampliamente considerada como la más emocionante poeta mujer que escribe en Persa (farsi, tayiko) de hoy y tiene un gran número de seguidores en Irán y Afganistán, así como en Tayikistán, donde es simplemente considerada como la más importante escritora viva del país. Su ingeniosa poesía se inspira en la rica tradición de la literatura persa de una manera a menudo subversiva y humorística.
DEBO ESCAPAR
Al fin la palabra para grito estalla en mi cuaderno.
Maldita esta sociedad enferma
donde las sombras se jactan de su propio tamaño.
Nadie entiende la ausencia del sol.
Nadie sabe que este brillo
sólo está fingiendo ser alba.
Nadie entiende la ausencia de significado
en los disfraces del camaleón.
Estos fantasmas huecos
con sus ropas relucientes
y pendientes brillantes sobre largas cadenas,
y la amplitud perfumada con el aroma de Europa -
desde el púlpito del tiempo, con palabras elegantes
dicen el engaño como si fuera la verdad.
Me siento ofendida por ellos, ofendida
por la pretensión de lo muy pequeño.
Me siento ofendida por mí misma, también:
Yo no entiendo suficiente
Sobre la debilidad de la forma y el coraje del significado.
¿Por qué converso con nada
y coso mis palabras entre los dobladillos de los mediocres
como rezos desde el margen o notas de pie de página?
Debo escapar
Debo huir hacia la simplicidad,
debo ofrendar lo mejor,
debo convertirme en otro ejemplo del sol.
O querido, ¿qué puedo decir, cuando incluso tú
eliges una tenue bombilla en vez de la luz del día,
incluso tú, con tu mirada perspicaz,
ya no percibes la ausencia del sol?
Traducción de León Blanco
A Nightingale in the Cage of My Breast
In this leafy orchard is a nightingale,
a nightingale whose songs are the dawn
and take me into the light,
to the mountains of legendary Farhad,
and to the place where mad Majnun talks to the raven:
‘Hello gorgeous!’ And to that lucky cave,
luminous with solitude, basking in gold,
and to a paradise where Adam and Eve stare at a wheat
grain:
‘Shall we taste it or not?’ If I were Eve, I wouldn’t taste it.
Thank goodness I’m not Eve or else mankind
would never forgive me for not sinning.
O tiny, miraculous wheat grain, O tiny apple of amazement,
O simple beginnings of myself.
There is a nightingale who sings my see through thoughts,
sings back to the beginning of memory.
There is a nightingale flying out of the cage of my breast;
it’s chirping now at the edge of morning.
I am leaving; I am leaving, my friend.
You have to step into life, spread your existence,
you must hurry,
you must bring to Farhad in the story,
the good news about Shirin, his beloved,
you must enter Zoroaster’s cave
and taste the light.
To taste the wheat grain of paradise – or not? O…
I am leaving, I am leaving at last:
my friend, open your heart for me.
translated by Jo Shapcott with Narguess Farzad
Back Again
The messenger of hope
died halfway along the road.
he had to travel all the way
from the beauty of beginnings,
his small presence
speaking virtue, goodness and purity.
His poems were a rocking cradle:
they poured sounds into my life again,
poured sounds, poured desires.
They helped me break away from evil eyes,
damning glances and false friendships,
I was rinsed instead by a bright spring.
But my messenger of hope
died halfway along the road.
My indigo veins were charged with cold:
I flew to the depths of a crystal corridor.
Voluminous icebergs
slept in geometries of silence,
dead blocks of ice.
Only my soul moved:
sometimes it would smash
against the walls of the corridor
and sometimes it flowed
through the big freeze.
Sad journey.
But I thought
if
I opened like a flower in the warmth
I’d meet enemies disguised as friends,
face betrayal all over again.
And I’d carry glowing pearls
to friendly parties
and bring back darkness.
And I’d go looking for someone
in the December streets,
someone who’s not there.
All over again I’d come face to face
with an acquaintance
and hang a smile on my face.
All over again sincerity would crash
into deceit, a heart would crash into a rose,
kindness would crash into fury, truth
would crash into lies, life into mortality.
All over again I’d see the poor
returning empty-handed from the bazaar.
I’d see a child bring grey, second-hand
soap to sell at our door. His grubby hands
open to reveal his pure palms.
O, if I should make it back from exploding
Shells and bullets I shall see life vibrating.
Small people, people whos instincts have shrunk,
will bring our home to its death
this home, which spreads across the dawn.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
You can’t escape the noise
When it’s in your own head.
When the shells explode, how can I talk love?
Through the crystal corridor of death, I had
a hard journey, and I wouldn’t have made it
without two clear voices calling for me,
if little hands hadn’t pulled me out.
My mother was there, somewhere.
There, meaning everywhere, everywhere
else, where the sincere dead live.
And noisy spring wanting every cell of me
all over again.
On the other side of the window, the old plane trees,
across the wintery road, were about to sprout.
Friends say: stop looking through a black porthole,
think dawn, and not night.
Look how the winter cold
Makes the birds loving, in a huddle under the roof.
Why do you see everything upside down?
Why call the moth a dove?
Even if you call the moth a dove
it’s nothing but a moth.
Let the moth be a moth again.
Let the sun carry on its luminous life.
Let every blade of grass see
The green truth in itself. You
Have no right to spread despair,
To disseminate darkness,
To see evil,
To speak evil,
And no right to do evil.
You don’t even have the right
To laugh at a moth.
I’ll be back again
Just as branches bud again
On the old tree. I’ll be back
Again, even though I know,
The light of patience has died
In the eyes of last night’s love,
Moved on. I’ll be back again
To the narrow band of sunset
In your blue eyes, the narrow band.
The first time I wore a watch
My classmates complimented me
In that teenage way. I didn’t know
Then, the galatic speed of watches.
Day and night, a pointless rush,
A gallop through emptiness. I didn’t
Know that the seasons would come
Earlier and earlier, transformations
Would be so fast, the mirror’s eyes
Would open in amazement to see
So many changes in just one image.
Why does matter only move
In the direction of decay?
When I tied a band of flowers
To my hair everyone pointed,
Laughing: ‘she’s trying to stay young
With flowers’. No, it’s not a simple
Hair decoration that grants youth.
Youth is inside, a light that stays on
Until late. What I mean is you.
O love that has not given its soul yet!
O truth not yet discovered!
O old book on a forgotten shelf!
O desert of secrets crossed by thirsty souls!
They don’t know that Enoch’s spring
could gush if they dug deeper.
Do you know? It isn’t possible
To walk in these alleyways
With the belief of a fourteen-year-old.
It isn’t possible to drive a horse and cart
To meet someone off the plane.
It isn’t possible to turn the cigarettes
On your lips to lollipops.
Drip, drip, drip.
Snow thaws in the gutters
Icicles on the roof corners
Fall off like old teeth.
A rook picks at a naked bone,
An invalid listens from a painful
Bed to singing in the street.
A child hands paper chains on its plastic
Pine-tree. My friend says: the birds will die
Without you, come back! And I will go back,
I will.
The literal translation of this poem was made by Narguess Farzad
The final translated version of the poem is by Jo Shapcott
Behind the Mass of Green
When the message came with a smile
that summer was coming,
men, sloshing their way
through puddles of muddy water,
carried on oblivious.
But the roses felt the warm kiss
of summer on their necks.
Chicks roared inside cracking shells,
plums blushed with excitement.
My mother lugged our winter clothes
out of the chest of drawers
and spread them in the sun.
I pulled my heart out of my breast,
and laid it in the sun as well,
my heart, smelling of frost, and musty winter.
Listen, from now on, my heart is married to the sun.
While you draw the curtains over it all,
and fall into mid-morning naps,
I make love with the sun.
I'm certain this love is my virtue but maybe it's the sun's sin -
because someone hurt me, recently,
someone with a ridiculous laugh,
which broke into the quiet night,
got my name so drunk even street girls shouted it.
Look. There is someone behind this mass of green.
Someone whose eyes, right from the beginning of creation
until this moment, saved faith and love.
Someone whose breath is the astonishment of Jesus,
someone whose touch is a loan from Moses,
someone whose voice veils the song of eclipses,
someone who is seated in the palm of knowledge
and in whose hands the half-apple
waits for sweet lips, someone
who has blessed horizons with dust from his feet.
Yes, behind this mass of green there is someone,
and for him I have come back to life.
The literal translation of this poem was made by Narguess Farzad
The final translated version of the poem is by Jo Shapcott
Flute Player
Where is the real bazaar?
I want to buy an eyeful of kindness.
I want to dress my soul in hyperbole.
There's a merchant who brings me
a whole spectrum of leaping colour
from the city of desires.
But here at the bazaar at Khojand,
faces are sour, talk is hot
and I long for the cool sweets of Tabriz.
Where is the real bazaar?
The flute-player tells me:
come with your ears used to insults,
and listen to the light recite a prayer to the dark.
Open your eyes used to pale shame
and see the beauty of Truth.
Where is the real bazaar?
The flute-player is there
calling my heart towards his hat
full of old change, but not a single pearl,
and since I am the jewel in the teardrop
I must go.
The literal translation of this poem was made by Narguess Farzad and Jo Shapcott
The final translated version of the poem is by Jo Shapcott
Must Escape
At last the word for scream bursts into my notebook.
Damn this sick society
where shadows boast about their own size.
No one understands the absence of the sun.
No one knows that this brightness
is just pretending to be dawn.
No one understands the absence of meaning
in the guises of the chameleon.
These hollow ghosts
with their gorgeous clothes
and dazzling pendants on long chains,
and breadth perfumed with the scent of Europe -
from the pulpit of time, with fancy words
they talk deceit as if it were truth.
I am offended by them, offended
by the pretentiousness of the very small.
I am offended by myself, too:
I just don't understand enough
about the weakness of form and the courage of meaning.
Why do I make conversation with nothing
and stitch my words into the hems of the mediocre
like margin prayers or footnotes.
Must escape
must run away to simplicity,
must elevate the best,
must become another example of the sun.
O darling, what can I say, for even you,
choose a dim light-bulb over daylight,
even you with your perceptive glance,
no longer see the absence of the sun.
The literal translation of this poem was made by Narguess Farzad
The final translated version of the poem is by Jo Shapcott
Stolen Apple
Winter rattles the glass
in a greedy hug.
I remember the ghosts in the stories of Bahmanyar:
ugly things, they steal beauty.
Capricorn scratches at the windows
and then returns to his own loneliness
minus the fairy of his desires.
I tape up the cracks around the windows.
Into this utter vacuum of silence
I puff my breath at the mirror.
O, tomorrow my friendship with the mirror will end.
But no, I was never friends
with these illusory mirrors.
The neighbour’s cat, naïve, perched on the roof edge,
harbours an impossible dream:
stealing meat from the stew pot at our house.
I stole only once in my life, at five years old:
an apple snatched through the neighbours window.
A satin-skinned, sugar-apple whose mother was moonlight
and whose father was the sun.
I was caught red-handed.
She came from next door, ‘just married’ all over her face,
and said, ‘Come here!’
My hands trembled. My heart dropped like a windfall.
The apple smiled.
I was a big sinner.
My sin was heavier than Adam and Eve’s.
Unexpectedly, the new bride next door
planted a kiss on my face and said,
‘I’ll give you this satin hankie, stitched by hand.’
I was a lucky sinner.
I only stole that once.
It was as if a stranger said to me,
‘My apple used to twinkle in my breast.
Why did you steal it?’
I was a lucky sinner.
It is December again
and in the mirror I look at my old patience.
Why did the mirror freeze over?
O sun, come and play doctor to the mirror!
Night comes again. Behind the windows, the naked tree,
like the ghost in the stories of Bahmanyar,
waits for the fairy of the moonlight.
The literal translation of this poem was made by Narguess Farzad
The final translated version of the poem is by Jo Shapcott
