Author: Mehri Yalfani
Be Patient
Be patient
You never feel alone
When breeze caresses your hands
And leave a message of desert
At your door.
Be patient
The wind won’t blow away
Your memories – written
On the walls of your solitude.
Be patient
It will rain soon
The bird will wash
Their sorrows
And the river will have a feast
For the pebbles = thirsty.
Who is going to lament
For the houses
Changed to rubbles
And no traces of the children
But their toys
Forgotten everywhere.
Let’s stay quiet
Words have lost their tastes
And me locked in a land
Without horizon.
Nov. 2018
Be Patient
Be patient
You never feel alone
When breeze caresses your hands
And leave a message of desert
At your door.
Be patient
The wind won’t blow away
Your memories – written
On the walls of your solitude.
Be patient
It will rain soon
The bird will wash
Their sorrows
And the river will have a feast
For the pebbles = thirsty.
Who is going to lament
For the houses
Changed to rubble
And no traces of the children
But their toys
Forgotten everywhere.
Let’s stay quiet
Words have lost their tastes
And me locked in a land
Without horizon.
Nov. 2018
Inderjit Sanghera’s Reviews > The Street of Butterflies
Inderjit Sanghera‘s review
Jun 21, 2020
really liked it
This collection of short stories is both simultaneously light and heavy; Yalfani’s prose style is light, almost ethereal, as she explores the lives of various Iranian characters both in Iran and aboard, however the themes which emerge, whether it be the mute loneliness of Soleiman in ‘Soleiman’s Silence’ or the romantic bitterness of ‘A Suitable Choice’, speak to a sense of lassitude and disappointment which has taken over the characters lives. Sometimes this disappointment can be the result of cronyism, as in ‘American Chocolate’, where a schoolgirl’s dreams of a place at university in Beirut are dashed when it is offered to a girl from a richer family or sometimes this disappointment can be rooted in a sense of loss, as with the writer in ‘Heart’s Language’, who in forgoing her native Farsi when writing in English loses the soul of her writing. Yet the common them running through all of these stories if one of loss of identity, as the character often feel rootless and helpless against the change which is engulfing their lives.
That is not to say that Yalfani’s stories are somehow gloomy or cynical; for example, the beautiful ending of ‘The Street of Butterflies’, in which a woman requests her house, which is surrounded by nondescript tower blocks, is converted into a nursery after her death, is touching without being sentimental and there is a lot of humour interspersed in the stories. Rather, Yalfani explores her stories from characters who didn’t fit in, who break against the tradition and who are trying to adapt to a world which often doesn’t understand them.
following reviews
Breathing in. Breating out
Breathing in. Breathing out
The woman teaching
Breathing in breathing out.
She said, my dear,
Life is so simple
Just …
Breathing in
And …
Breathing out.
I said, well
Breathing in has no problem
When the air is pure
But breathing out wouldn’t be so easy
When your lungs are darkened
Breathing the polluted air
Of injustice.
Life isn’t so simple
When you have to breath in
And can’t breath out
Jan., 2018
Seeking refuge at nowhere
To: All those refugees who are wandering on the world’s seas
Seeking refuge at nowhere
Words are flowing in my head
But no river, no sea
To reach
Just a barren land
And I let them disperse.
Without giving root to a poem.
Wise people say,
Life is beautiful
It might be true
But…
What about that boy
Lying down
At a sea shore
With his face down on the earth
As if sleeping in his comfortable bed
In his parents palace at their dream land
Not floating in a sea
Seeking refuge at the bottom of
The sea.
Sept. 26, 2017
Your desk
Your Desk
You submit me
Your dreams- your nightmares
And don’t care
How heavy are – your hands
Saturated with words – dark, bitter, vague.
My veins – empty of chlorophylls
And spring a remote dream
Evaporated from my flesh.
But…
Sometimes
When you open the window
Among the roar of thousands monsters
Crashing my nerves
A breeze peers into the room
Caressing my skin
The breeze mixing with your words
Reviving the greenness of a flourishing forest
In my dusty memories
And I feel your words
Tasting of a your memories
Lost in a remote corner of the world.
1997
How old are you
How old are you
The day – I left my house
With a gray sky
Over my head
No smile – on bare trees
No names – on streets
My diary was lost.
A lady with
Last night make up on her face
Asked me
“How old are you?”
I was thinking of my shoes
To tight to go
Faraway.
I saw a woman
With a question
In her blue eyes
Not seeing me
Swept away
By the waves –
Ignorant
To my memories – blank.
She asked me,
“How old are you?”
I wondered, “How old I was?”
With wrinkles of pain
On my bones – unseen.
Nov. 1994
Moments
Moments
Moments stretch
Their hands
To touch my shoulders
And I am old
As a river
Flowing forever.
Eternity sits
By my window
And I become
Young
A baby
Just being born.
Each day
I give birth to my soul
In my body
A broken cradle.
Each day
My feet younger
To begin a journey
To night
To the depth of solitude
Surrounding me with noise.
Nov. 1996.
سرگذشت
سرگذشت
تمام قصه همین بود
یک اه که در سینه ام مانده بود
و نمی خواست درآسمان بی آفتاب عصر رها شود
و یک لبخند که بر طاقچه اتاق خالی ماند
هیچ کس با من همراه نبود
وقتی راه افتادم فقط سایه ام بود
و آهی که در دلم مانده بود
و خیال رهایی نداشت
و من تنها تر از آخرین برگی که بر درخت میماند
سودای افتادن نداشتم
سودای رفتن بود که مرا واداشت
اندوهم را مثل آهی از سینه بیرون دهم
و راه بیافتم
و برسم به برهوت خاموش بی پناهی
و در راه
فقط زمزمه نسیم بود
که مرا بدرقه می کرد
و من تنها نبودم
با هزاران افسوسی که پیشاپیش من می رفتند
تا بر من راه نمایند
من تنها نبودم.
26 فوریه 2020