The Fern Poem by Rosa Jamali

The Fern
A Poem by Rosa Jamali
Translated from original Persian into English by the Author

I was a seven-storey being, covered in scarce species of a plant
And it was a funeral ceremony
And I was the only single mourner
First I picked up a gemstone; some pebbles and sands of this soil,
And then sealed it over my forehead
Returned and had a glance at my homeland and wept
My father was a phoenix; My mother a restless Goddess in Shush and Ecbatana and on the tomb of Mordechai
Where God was with me
My far-sighted binocular eyes are a camera in this sheer darkness,
And I'm the silent voiceless Myth of clashes of spoons and forks at the dinner table
Deity of The Nawab Highway, heading the graveyards
At East End of this city... What's drizzling over your head blow by blow and nonstop, incessantly...
What is this entire dirt and filth in thorns and dust which is descending in a very slow pace, gentle and soft!
What does it resemble? What could it be?

The fairies were nesting over my dark hair and brooding,
And I was hard at work; cleansing and washing the fairies, rinsing and stewing them like rice.
You knew the time well, the moment that was lingering and yawning,
That very frozen moment and then absolute silence
While with my wounded nails on the stove, I was boiling over the saucepan!
When I covered the whole scene of the Revolution Square and erupted like a volcano
Perhaps I had just kept my face pale with bleaching...

The Fern I am
The Orphan Land
The Stepchild
Fostered Land
Burned,
And forbidden
And infected with all kinds of diseases, fake gurus, lies and manipulations

What has captured your heart and attached you to this land, brother?
This land that has been completely burned, half buried and the other half contaminated with lead,
The smokes are left...

The Fern I am!
The Goddess of wild-growing flowers,
The lady of thorn and thistles
Upon the sorrow of a talisman woven into my country,
And how I dug the mountains,
What have you done then?

Only a handful of soil which has been displaced
Makes me bewitched forever
Ashes which have been sprinkled over Bozorgmehr and Yazdgerd and the Great Republic
My ashes which have been spread over the seas and over the far oceans
And I have been resided in the waters of the River Tigris eternally
The stale smell of dampness;
The spider which has nested right over my head
And you had foretold all this,
You had already seen it...

The naming ritual is over.
Turn off the lights!
Tomorrow is a Saturday,
Oh, I will not sigh!
Mirrors have grown over my index finger!
For I have wept the waters of seven seas in six thousand years
And I have taken refuge in the corner of a chair in fury

The sidewalks are deserted.
Passers-by are perpetually dead
And this deserted Military Zone
Is no longer residential.

I yielded to the winds
And packed
Resting my body in the winds
And resting my soul in the windshields...

Fixed in a second for thousands of years,
And my words scattered like ashes and coal...

The Fern is an ill-bred wild seed not called by a name
It's exactly like a lettuce leaf: not happened to be named,
But it's been peeled, sliced
Misshaped, warped and deformed
Why should it be named in the first place?