Editor’s Choice- Granaz Mousavi (1974, Tehran)

Granaz Mousavi (1974, Tehran) is an Iranian poet, screenwriter and filmmaker predominantly known for her avant-garde poetry in the early 1990[‘s. Her second book “Barefoot Till Morning” was the winner of Karnameh Best Poetry Book of the Year Award in 2001 and is currently in its fourth edition. In 2006, being shortlisted in local, state wide, and across the country competitions she won the Holding Redlich prize for her script ‘Pitch’ at SPAA (The Screen Producers Association of Australia). “Sketching on Night” (1996) published underground in Tehran and “The Songs of the Forbidden Woman” (2003) are among her other works. Mousavi has conducted many poetry readings worldwide and her films were screened in international festivals.

 

Reyhaneh Girls 1

 

By the shoulders they shrug
in discount shoes
there is the struggle of a body
that is blued relentlessly
And the glare of eyes that don’t seem
to make out the buyer’s look.

 

She still fastens the knots tightly
She still buttons up

 

In runaway shoes
in that phase before wrinkle and hanging
a female, in simple footwear takes the name of a street

 

A body that is not yet in shreds
gets in
and a soul gets out from the other end.

 

Granaz Mousavi
Translation: Maryam Ala Amjadi

 

1. Reyhaneh Home established in 1990 in Tehran, a social, cultural asylum and shelter for young (majorly young adults) runaway women, sex workers and tramps with the aim to protect them from social consequences and help them return to public life.

 

Airport

 

Search my bag, what is the point?
At the bottom of my pocket there is a hidden sigh that has always heard:
Stop!

 

Leave me alone!
Hell! I will sleep with the raspberry bushes and I shall not be overruled!
Why do you always target a woman
who tears away her heart from the wall
and pins another to her chest?
There is nothing in my suitcase
but tresses that have committed no sin
Leave me alone!
I have dreamed that I have pinched this heart from God
that I will not arrive at tomorrow
I dreamed wherever I would go
my shoes get stuck to Friday
so the entire earth of the lord has blood cancer, eh?
I take a dandelion for a fortune cookie and release it to the moon
Return o Friday2 of childhood!
Return with the same boy out of whose hands had grown a paper kite
and I was in love with him
a love measured by all the ten fingers I knew
Why do you always target a woman
who has pinned a heart to her chest?

 

Here flight is always delayed
in the bow and arrow of war lanes
or the flowery skirt of cloth lines
Butterflies age anyhow
at least give back my childhood photo!

 

Stranger than the paper kite that remained in the trunk
I get stamped and I long for home
The antennas target the sky
but on the cloth line my heart embraces God.

 

Granaz Mousavi
Translation: Maryam Ala Amjadi

 

2.Last day of the weekend and day of public worship in Islam, stated to be the original day ordained by God.

Letter to A Man I Don’t Know

2
When noon went up
When the clock put one leg on the other
I told myself
death could wait
till unsaid words are said
we waited so long for tomorrow
until night faded away from our hair
Now it snows
and death should wait

1

I tore away my face from the mirror
a trail of kohl and fire stays
on the loving lips of reflection
On the way
by delayed lanes
we asked children without a football
how many more Septembers were between us
I know that one day your fertile hands will come
and I will become like the planted flowers of this very square
and then nothing
nothing but half said words and winds
By the time I reach office
school
shops
a place which is not somewhere
a house with no numbers
I would scream getting lost a thousand times
You don’t know,
here the lane is a fair share of the boys
our share extended in queues of weariness
ends the lane
where crows of evening’s edge
doubt their resemblance to school girls
Did you hear?
the fish went away with no passport and a salty sea remained
and the sky cannot afford so much solitude

4

When night comes
this letter too will be done
and I will look at my aged childhood photo on the shelf
and I will remember
that no one told us
the window
forgets the footprints of the passerby
that the sky cannot afford so much loneliness
I wish someone had told us that the moon
dies behind closed doors
death comes
and that tomorrow is an extension of last night

3

Now it is evening
and I come home from puttying the days
and your existence is a bush
that is supplemented to the life of the dragonfly
lest death should fall on the meager life of the butterfly
Come so I would not be lonely among so many plants, earth and humans
Come here
though we draw waiting with the sigh that is behind the windows
and we get finished
Come
Like a sky
that has stood a lifetime over the roof
my last word is to sit with you.

Granaz Mousavi
Translation: Maryam Ala Amjadi

 

Words of the Navy-Blue overcoat

Were I to drape all worldly clouds on my corpse
they would still fling a hood on my shoulders
lest I should be bare.

Here is the dark half the moon
The hand that slaps
knows not
sometimes the bowl fish
falls in love with the whale.

 

They holler at me in vain
They don’t know
I have already become a fish
and your river has flowed through me
I don’t want to wear the deserts of the world on my body
and breathe on a planet they yet have to identify
Even if they take the wind to read its fingerprints
they cannot trace back your kisses

 

One must go out into the lane
though cars pass through us and the sun
One must go out to the lane
so many skies don’t fit into the window

I want to sunbathe in the most southern points of your soul
even the devil has no use for ceiling lamps
The one who pulls the curtains3
doesn’t know that the voice of the one
standing on the other end of the line
always arrives tomorrow

 

Let them latch the door as much as they please
Tonight I come from the dark half of the moon
and I shall tear into pieces all hoods and curtains

 

Let them rent a room around hell
even for the paper kite and the glowworm

I too shall go
I want to give my dress to the sun

Granaz Mousavi
Translation: Maryam Ala Amjadi

3 Paredeh-curtain and possibly a pun on pardeh bekaarat, the hymen.