The Cluttered Table
This cluttered table
is the corpse of the party.
این میزِ به هم ریخته
جنازه ی یک مهمان یست
من و تو که تنها بودیم
این میزِ به هم ریخته
جنازه ی یک مهمان یست
من و تو که تنها بودیم
پس این همه ته سیگار بر کفِ اتا قها
این چا یهای سرد
این کاغذهای مچاله
،که در تصادف با عقل مُرده اند
از کجا آمده است؟
*
تو
سال ها پیش رفته ای
و جسدهای من
در هر کجای این خانه
هر یک به کاری مشغول اند
This cluttered table
is the corpse of the party.
You and I were alone,
so where have all these
cigarette butts on the floor come from,
these cold cups of tea
these crumpled papers,
ruined in a collision with acuity?
You left years ago
and my inert bodies
are occupied with something
in every corner of this house.
_____
From Lean Against This Late Hour by Garous Abdolmalekian, to be published on April 14, 2020 by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2020 by Garous Abdolmalekian. Translation copyright © 2020 by Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh.
Garous Abdolmalekian was born in 1980, days after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, and lives in Tehran. He is the author of five poetry books and the recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize. His poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish. Abdolmalekian is presently the editor of the poetry section at Chesmeh Publications in Tehran and the executive editor of publications at the Youth Poetry Office in Iran.
