{"id":3319,"date":"2021-12-15T19:59:50","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T19:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/?p=2360"},"modified":"2023-12-21T13:22:29","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T13:22:29","slug":"poems-by-gasham-najafzadeh-azerbaijan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/poems-by-gasham-najafzadeh-azerbaijan\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems by Gasham Najafzadeh, Azerbaijan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gasham Najafzadeh, Azerbaijan<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE BATTLE, THE BOOT AND DEATH<\/p>\n

War is an expression of feelings,
\nthe song of the bullets an artistic style,
\nthe soldiers a rapid succession of thoughts
\nand blood the fearsome silence of a minute.<\/p>\n

I once looked at the boot
\nof a dead soldier,
\nstill not cold inside.
\nIt stood straight up
\nin remembrance of feet.
\nBoots are what tell us most
\nOf the death of a man.
\nThat is why the wedding-ring
\non the trigger-finger
\nbegs the finger every time:
\nI implore you, please ,
\ndon’t push me against the metal.
\nThe soldier’s grief in the trenches
\nis best asked of the foot.
\nAt times, the dirt sticking to the boot
\nis the mark of tension inside.
\nIn a word, the boot
\nIs the most mournful picture
\nof the absence of a man.<\/p>\n

A PARK<\/p>\n

It is as this park
\nis a painting
\nhanging from the collar of the city.
\nThe benches are green
\nand the people on them,
\nespecially the young boys and grils,
\nare its forest dreams.
\nThe winds of time have welded them
\ntightly onto the benches.
\nA woman has kept her balance,
\nholding her child by the hand.
\nLook! That gril, a student perhaps,
\nhas held firmly on with two hands
\nto the thoughts in her heart
\nand remains standing.
\nThe trees too still stand.
\nIf you think about it
\nthese trees were planted
\nwith human looks.<\/p>\n

The wind, an onlooker,
\nblows across the painting
\nand shakes the trees.
\nBut the woman
\nholds her child tightly by the hand.
\nShe wishes to go nowhere.
\nHow sad that time
\nwill one day
\ntake the painting away
\nlike a curator at an exhibition.<\/p>\n

TURNING FACES<\/p>\n

There can be no doubt
\nthat women have a hand in the rain.
\nWhen the raindrops begin to sting
\nthrough the undone buttons of my dhirt
\nI recognise the women’s hands.
\nRain is a synonym for woman
\nor perhaps her other face.
\nAll women are rainfall
\nShowing its other face
\nThe other side of the wind is a man.
\nWhat makes women show
\ntheir rainfall face,
\nis men turning
\ntheir wind face.
\nAnd what makes men
\nShow their other face
\nIs the emptiness of their lives.<\/p>\n

TO WRITE A LETTER<\/p>\n

To write a letter
\nis to water a cornfield.
\nEach letter of the alphabet
\na single ear of corn.
\nAnd each ear a finger:
\nthe earth saying “I am here”<\/p>\n

To write a letter
\nis to knit stockings.
\nEach woolen letter
\nsoon fills up the feet
\nis to set out on a long journey.
\nTo walk is to write the feet on the road.<\/p>\n

To write a letter
\nis the last-born girl in a village.
\nTo write a letter
\nis to make time for her.
\nShe sends time to the city
\nWhere her lover has no time.<\/p>\n

To write a letter
\nis to copy out the heart
\nLike copying out a letter.
\nDo not pass letters hand-to-hand
\nthey may bleed.<\/p>\n

SKETCHES OF PRISON<\/p>\n

Those are men, in prison,
\nbut their wives
\nand their babies held in their memory.
\nThose are not men, beaten up in prison,
\nbut their women
\nand, in particular,
\nthe women’s eyes.<\/p>\n

The courts can never learn
\nThe reason
\nwhy men kill others.
\nPerhaps it’s the murdeed
\nwho are most murderous.<\/p>\n

At the end of each day
\nThe darkness leaves the cells
\nto take each prisoner back to his home.
\nThe prisoners’ wives clearly see
\nunder the moonlight
\nwhat their husbands suffer in prison.
\nThey can taste prison
\nin the cheap cigarettes
\nbought on credit.
\nEach prisoner goes out
\nwith a piece of letter
\nwritten to his wife.
\nEach night the interrogators attack
\nthe dreams of these women
\non the prison wires.<\/p>\n

Prisons turn men
\ninto the cruelest murderers.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gasham Najafzadeh, Azerbaijan THE BATTLE, THE BOOT AND DEATH War is an expression of feelings, the song of the bullets an artistic style, the soldiers a rapid succession of thoughts and blood the fearsome silence of a minute. I once looked at the boot of a dead soldier, still not cold inside. It stood straight […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[],"book_author":[],"book_publisher":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3949,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions\/3949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"book_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_author?post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"book_publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwabogdani.org\/sq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_publisher?post=3319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}