Waiting
Nima Yushi
Who is Nima Yushij?
I think poetry is not creatable. It exists in time and place. The poet’s
fate is remembering its existence by forgetting the time and place. The poet,
unable to stand still, is eternally in transformation and birth. The poet knows
he is without self and will never find his true self. He is not content with
life, for he is not content with death. This is why he begins to doubt, so that
so he stands out of the circle of time and place, like a hypothetic point. Out
of the circle, the poet is the living possibility of existence and his solitary
struggle makes the world of the circle possible. Nima Yushij ‘s solitary
struggle as a true poet made possible freedom for Persian poetry that was in
chains of rhyme and rhythm for long centuries.
With my poetry I have driven the people into a great conflict;
Good and bad, they have fallen in confusion;
I myself am sitting in a corner, watching them:
I have flooded the nest of ants. ***
Mahmud Kianush, well known poet and translator in his book "Modern Persian
Poetry" writes:
“What made Nima Yushij a great, powerful guru for the young poets
of his time were his innovations in form and style rather than the content of
his poetry. In this way Persian Poetry, while maintaining its own independence,
gained after a thousand years the unbounded freedom of prose. This was the real
achievement of Nima Yushij and the reason for his being acclaimed as the founder,
or the father, of modern Persian poetry....”
I am enormously grateful to my friend Christina Pacosz, a very fine poet, for
her enthusiasm and warm concern which helped me complete my translations, and
I never forget her precious assistance in checking the English text very carefully.
At nightfall
I keep waiting for you.
At nightfall
While shadows are thickening
In the branches of talagen*
Making lamplit lovers gloomy
I keep waiting for you.
At nightfall
While still valleys
Are sleeping as dead serpents
While ivy twines about
Jupiter’s foot
Whether or not you remember me
I will never cease to remember you
I keep waiting for you.
* Talagen: a kind of forestal tree in the north of Iran.
Edited by: Christina Pacosz
Nima Yushi - Ali Sfandiari (1896-1959), the father of modern Iran poetry, when he decided to publish his poems, choose the pen name Nima Yushij, which means: an innovator from Yush (a village in the north of Iran). A simple shepherd, the son of a farmer, started a revolution in Persian poetry: Nima Yushij ‘s solitary struggle as a true poet made possible freedom for Persian poetry that was in chains of rhyme and rhythm for long centuries.
