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 سر ِ 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 (علیرضا روشن) was born in Tehran in 1977, where he worked as a journalist, heading the Books Desk, at Iran’s most popular reformist daily newspaper (Shargh, شرق). Around 2008, he began publishing his poetry daily online, at 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 (کتابِ نیست ). The selection here is his first publication in English.

To date, his books in Persian include: Becoming You (تو شدن), Soveyda (سُوِیدا), The Dot & 19 Other Stories (نقطه و نوزده ), Fade (محو), Us (ما), A Little Book of Love (کتاب کوچک عشق), Cage Poetry (شعر قفس), Moonstone (سنگِ مهتاب), and Leyli’s Shadow (سایه‌ی لیلی). Michel Manasse noted in European Journal (Brussels) that Alireza Roshan’s poems remind him of two classic Persian poets: Omar Khayyám and Sa’adi. Evident in his work are 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.