To those who left
to those who stayed behind.
You leave, I’ll stay, you leave, I’ll stay.
I swear, I can’t endure the separation of exile.
You will hear in my bones till I die the same “tale of the reed,
complaining of separations”* till I die
You leave, I’ll stay, though the watchman’s order to blackout**
bores through my ears like a dagger,
though we hide lights and live under covered lamps
and there sparkle and light fill the night.
Where will my heart seek sanctuary
if this house collapse?
We stay in these silent ruins, children, old ones, and I,
and the sad memories of the absent braves.
I will not abandon this turbulent land
to beg for affection where hospitality is not a virtue.
Even if dark and unsmiling this sky belongs to me,
this canopy is not on loan.
Fervent in my beliefs, I hope for a better day.
I take one step and then another.
You leave, I’ll stay.
You leave, I’ll stay.
*Opening lines of Rumi’s Mathnavi, well known as any lines of poetry by Iranians: “Hear the tales told by the reed/ complaining of separations // From the time I was cut from the reedbed / men and women have cried with me in sympathy”…–trans.
** The context of this poem is the War with Iraq, September 1980 to August 1988, the bombing of cities, blackouts—trans.
Simin Behbahani’s English Translations from the book entitled A Cup of Sin Courtesy of Syracuse University Press
