Author: Mehri Yalfani

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

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

The Street of Butterflies
by

Mehri Yalfani

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.

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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

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

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

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 stretch

Their hands

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