Long Exposure VII
It is a strange music
death
موسیقیِ عجیبی ست مرگ
بلند می شوی
و چنان آرام و نرم می رقصی
موسیقیِ عجیبی ست مرگ
بلند می شوی
و چنان آرام و نرم می رقصی
که دیگر هیچ کس
تو را نمی بیند
It is a strange music
death
You stand up
and dance so smoothly and softly
that nobody can see you
any longer
_____
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.
