Translated by Parviz Omidvar and Iraj Omidvar
No one cares for the flowers.
No one cares for the goldfish.
No one wants to believe
that the flower patch is dying.
That the heart of the flower garden has bloated
under the sunshine.
That the mind of the flower garden
is slowly becoming void
of its green memories.
And the feel of the flower garden
is like something solitary
that has rotted in its own isolation.
The yard of our house is lonesome.
The yard of our house is yawning,
in expectation of rain from an unknown cloud.
And the tiny fish pond of our yard is empty.
Small, inexperienced stars
fall off the trees to the ground.
And at night
the sound of coughing is heard
through the wan windows of the fish house.
The yard of our house is lonesome.
Father says:
It’s beyond me. O, it’s beyond me.
I carried my burden,
and did my share.
In his room
from morning till night,
he reads Ferdowsi’s legends.
Father says to mother:
Damn all the fish and all the chickens.
After I die,
what difference can it make
if there’s a flower garden or not.
For me, my pension is enough.
The entire life of my mother
is spent at a prayer-mat, spread out
at the threshold of the fear of hell.
Mother is always looking for the trace of sin
at the bottom of everything.
And she thinks it’s been the curse of a plant
that has befouled the flower garden.
Mother says prayers all day;
she’s a congenital sinner.
And she blows prayers to all the goldfish.
Mother is waiting for His Advent*,
and the grace that will descend from heaven.
My brother calls the flower garden the cemetery.
He makes fun of the jumble of the grass
and counts the corpses of the fish
that turn into decomposed particles
under the sick skin of the water.
My brother is addicted to philosophy.
He sees the healing of the flower garden
in its death.
He gets drunk
and punches the doors and the walls.
And he tries to say
that he is very sensitive, weary, and despaired.
He takes along his despair—
like his I.D., his pocket calculator,
his handkerchief, his lighter,
and his ballpoint pen—
to the streets and the bazaar.
And his despair
is so small
that it gets lost every night
in the noise of the bar.
And my sister who used to be a friend of the flowers,
and who, whenever mother spanked her,
would take the simple words of her heart
to the kind and silent gathering of the flowers,
and who would sometimes
invite the goldfish families
to the party of the sun and cookies…
Now her house is at the other side of the city.
Inside her artificial house,
with artificial goldfish—
under the auspices of the artificial love of her husband—
while standing under the artificial apple tree branches,
she sings artificial songs;
but she makes natural babies.
She…
whenever she visits us
is pregnant.
The yard of our house is lonesome.
The yard of our house is lonesome.
All day
the sound of shattering
and explosion
can be heard from behind the door.
Our neighbors
are planting mortar shells and machine guns—
in place of flowers—
in their flower gardens.
Our neighbors cover
their tiled fish ponds.
And the tiled fish ponds—
without themselves wanting it—
are secret stockpiles of gunpowder.
And our little children
have filled their backpacks
with little bombs.
The yard of our house is perplexed.
I am worried about the time
that has lost its heart.
I am worried when I think
about the uselessness of so many hands
and the unfamiliarity of so many faces.
I am as lonesome as the student
who loves her geometry lessons outrageously.
And I think that the flower garden
can be taken to the hospital.
I think…
I think…
I think…
And the heart of the flower garden
is bloated under the sun.
And the mind of the flower garden
is slowly becoming empty
of its green memories.
*The Twelfth Imam. Shiite Moslems are waiting for the return of their last Imam from occultation where God has kept him.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
