I STILL THINK OF THAT RAVEN...

I still think
of that raven
above the valleys of Rush.*

With his twofold rustle
he cut with his black scissors.
from the dull, paper sky
a wayward curve.
And when he turned to the nearby mountain range,
he told with the dry rasping of his throat
something,
that the mountains,
irritated
under the burning sun,
again and again
replied,
glassy of staring with their heads of stone
long afterwards.

*

Sometimes I aks to myself:
What has a raven to tell
with such decisive-imposing presence
and such a penetrating mourningcolour,
when he flies at noon
above the arrid yellow of the corn-fields
over there
over a pair of silver poplars?

What has a raven to say
with such a roaring, with such a rage,
precisely to the old mountains,
so that those tired, sleepy hermits
reply it to one another,
again and again

long afterwards?

* Rush is a green, beautiful village in Northen Iran, birthplace
of Nima Jushidsh, father of modern Iranian poetry

AHMAD SCHAMLU

(tr. from German by Germain Droogenbroodt) Ahmad Schamlu, Iran 1952 - 2000 is together with Furugh Farrukhzad one of the most important poets of modern Persian poetry. He has been imprisoned several times and live as well in exile. This poems has been published in POINT no. 11 "When they torture me" poems by poets who have been imprisoned, exiled or killed.