Born Upon the Dark Spear: Selected Poems / Ahmad Shamlu

53 Pages·2015·2.48 MB·English

Chasm. Mist. Dark Song. Hour of A
H
Execution. Behind the Wall. These are
M
just some of the poetic titles of Ahmad
A BORN UPON
Shamlu (1925–2000) that together form D
the cipher to one of the most powerful 
S
figures in modern world literature.  H THE DARK SPEAR
A
M
Brought together here in translation L
U
for the first time, these selected works
SELECTED POEMS
provide a gateway to the paradoxical
imagination of an author who traverses OF AHMAD SHAMLU
B
immense distances of oblivion & light. or
n
On the one hand, Shamlu is known as U
a poet of night-raids and prison cells, p
o
dead-ends and burial orations, one n
t
h
for whom endlessly doomed horizons e
D
always keep him close to themes of
a
martyrdom, fatality, rage, atrocity, & rk
S
struggle. Yet, he is also the writer immor- p
e
talized under the pen-name “Daybreak,” a
r
a figure of illumination & ecstatic : S
e
intensity who once declared himself the le
c
“vanguard of the sun” and who threatened t
e
d
to “hang the devil’s lantern from the P
porch of every hidden torture chamber o
e
m
of this oppressive paradise.”
s
In a space caught between honor-
Translated by
codes and devastation, futility and
apotheosis, one finds the poetic verses
of Shamlu as among the first in a Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
bloodline unbound-by-world.   
isbn 978–1–9406251–6–4
www.contramundum.net
S E L E C T E D P O E M S
O F A H M A D S H A M L U
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BORN UPON
THE DARK SPEAR
SELECTED POEMS
OF AHMAD SHAMLU
Translated by

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
Translation of Born Upon the Library of Congress
Dark Spear: Selected Poems © Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
2015 Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh.
Shamlu, Ahmad, 1936–
The poems selected for this
translation were taken from [Born Upon the Dark Spear.
the original Farsi collection English.]
Majmu’eh-ye Asar-e Ahmad
Born Upon the Dark Spear /
Shamlu [The Collected Works
Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh;
of Ahmad Shamlu] © 1381/2002
translated from the original Farsi
Zamaneh Press.
by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
First Contra Mundum Press
Edition 2015. .—ıst Contra Mundum Press
Edition
All Rights Reserved under 172 pp., 6x9 in.
International & Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. isbn 9781940625164
No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by I. Shamlu, Ahmad.
any electronic means, including II. Title.
information storage and retrieval III. Mohaghegh, Jason Bahbak.
systems, without permission in IV. Translator.
writing from the publisher, V. Foreword.
except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review. 2015960160
TABLE OF CONTENTS
0–v Translator’s Foreword: The Brutal Humanist
Born Upon the Dark Spear: Selected Poems
– 01. Twenty-Three
2 7
– 02. Mist
8 9
– 03. Fog
10 11
04. The Hour of Execution
12
– 05. Curse
13 14
06. Nocturnal
15
– 07. Of Your Uncles…
16 17
– 08. Alone
18 19
– 09. Behind the Wall
20 21
10. In the Far Distance
22
– 11. On the Stone Walkway
23 25
– 12. The Penalty
26 27
13. Sketch
28
14. Poverty
29
15. A Scream
30
16. Nocturnal
31
17. Midnight
32
– 18. Street
33 34
– 19. Petition
35 36
– 20. Garden of the Mirror
37 38
21. Between Staying and Going
39
– 22. There is Nothing to be Said…
40 41
23. Nocturnal
42
– 24. Nocturnal
43 44
– 25. The Inception
45 46
26. On Death
47
27. Nocturnal
48
– 28. Anthem for the One Who Left and the One Who
49 58
Stayed Behind
– 29. In the Struggle of Mirror and Image
59 60
30. Of the Cage
61
31. Three Anthems for the Sun (Nocturnal)
62
32. River
63
– 33. Elegy
64 65
34. The Instruments
66
– 35. Allegory
67 68
– 36. The Letter
69 72
37. Let My Prison Be Without Barricades
73
– 38. Another Season
74 75
– 39. Anthem for the Enlightened Man Who Went the
76 77
Way of the Shadow
40. Nocturnal
78
41. Nocturnal
79
42. Nocturnal
80
43. Nocturnal
81
– 44. Anthem of Abraham in Fire
82 84
45. Dark Song
85
– 46. The Last Arrow in the Quiver, As They Say
86 87
47. Waning Moon
88
– 48. A Signal
89 90
– 49. Still I Think About That Raven
91 92
– 50. Burial Oration
93 94
51. The Chasm
95
– 52. Song of the Supreme Wish
96 97
53. Children of the Depths
98
54. A Remoteness
99
55. A Remoteness
100
56. A Remoteness
101
– 57. Endgame
102 103
58. Morning
104
– 59. In this Dead End
105 106
60. Song of the Fellow Travelers
107
61. Resurrection
108
– 62. Enamored
109 110
63. Revolutionary Newspaper
111
– 64. Who Created the Universe?
112 113
– 65. In the Struggle with Oblivion
114 119
66. Contemplation…
120
– 67. Interpreter of Catastrophe
121 122
68. The Pitch Black of Sightlessness
123
69. Lifeless Nature
124
70. Summary of Conditions
125
71. For Which Corpse Does It Moan…?
126
72. Boiling with Rage…
127
73. The Burning Men and Women
128
74. The Day After
129
75. Like the Pit of Shaghad
130
76. Like the Drunken-in-Heat Fountains of Fire…
131
77. The First I Saw in the World…
132
– 78. Jagged and Limitless…
133 134
born upon the dark spear · selected poems
Alone …
Now they carry me to the sacrificial altar
Listen, all of you, who sit beholding the spectacle
For when counted, your idiocies far exceed my uncommitted sins !
—With you I have never shared any bond.
Your heavenly wish, which was to drag me across the hellish fever
of an inconclusive waiting , will turn to ashes ; that I might take
a souvenir of such grand fire from your awful hell, whose flare
will make the poor hell-dwellers swallow down their blazing
environment like some refreshing drink.
For anything that is aligned with you, anything that has shared
a bond with you, I damn :
Upon my children
and upon my father
On your rank breast and
on those hands of yours that squeezed my hand
in such great deceit.
On your wrath and on your kindness
and on my own self
that unwanted, bears an outward physical resemblance
to your bodies.
18
ahmad shamlu
I am in terror from both near and far.
Your gods would grant forgiveness to the tyrant Sisyphus
but I am the defeated Prometheus
from whose wounded liver
I have spread a feast for fateless crows.
My pride rests in my eternal pain
such that, in your every greeting and praise, I feel
the beak of a vulture in the vicinity of my liver.
The sting of a lance across the torn slit of my liver would have
been more intoxicating than a kiss from your lips, for from your
lips I have never heard anything spoken other than dishonesty.
And a thorn in the pupil of my eyes would have been more
pleasurable than your buyer’s look, for nowhere was your look
toward me anything but that of a master toward his slave …
To your men, I prefer murderers
To your women, I prefer prostitutes.
In the wake of a God who would open the doors of his paradise
to your kind,
I would be happier with eternal damnation.
Sitting among the virtuous and sleeping among untouched girls,
in such a paradise : let this be your cheap gift !
I am the defeated Prometheus
from whose wounded liver has spread an everlasting feast
for fateless crows.
Listen, all of you who sit beholding
the spectacle of this stranger’s sacrifice that is I — :
With you I have never shared any bond.
19