1
World, you are an island in the ocean I cried.
It is no rumor: you are Zin and I am Mam.No Adam, you have not fathered
An angel’s face, from Adam until now.I am a sheikh. My head is a mountain, my breath
Is a breeze, my eyes a fountain, my turban, fog.They say, “The beloved will come to my pillow.”
I know better. God knows even better.The lip of Zuhak pleaded, “The snakes of my hair
When do they eat? Where is their ration, a piece of Jam’s head?”Don’t say Sufis are liars and mullahs speak true.
They are the same, one is not more or less.A truthful disciple and a dignified sheikh,
Their guards are lazy, their lovers unconcerned.The great Constantinople is darkened:
Nobodies govern and darken literature.With His order and law and system,
God made His own red a misery.The two boys are opposites: life and death.
Each an example of his mother.They don’t look like each other: the stalker and Haji Qadr.
God, humble him and make Haji holy.
2
My body and soul are so busy with you
I wouldn’t know my own death.When you have me, why do need a stalker?
A dog?During the day, I will keep your door.
At night, I will guard you.Like lamp oils and grand fruits
My secrets burned. Much was revealed.Your hair distracts the heart, gathers the stalkers,
Contains both my help and my harm.Say, “Qadr!”
But I say, “Call me Habiba.”My tongue is to worship you.
He who is not a poet is sterile.In my poems, I have many sons.
Don’t say Haji had no work in the Ottoman Empire.I am a man in a city of women.
3
These dogs that are our ministers and lawyers,
If they come to you, by God, don’t think them shepherds or cowherds.That’s donkey piss. They say they inherit the prophet’s religion,
But they are all slaves to an idol.Don’t even look at their leader.
Any literature there is, God put in our mouths to say:They gave the state to the asses, they threw their blessings to the dogs.
Any person is a person, until he’s not.One word is enough.
Come discuss the line and mark of our orphans.
Sacrifice the dust beneath you, Kay’s crown, Jam’s elevation.
Sacrifice myself for your head, oblique fez, Kayan’s crown.I wouldn’t compare myself to Dara, Alexander or Khosrau,
Even if I knew I’d become the kennel master for this door.For your lovers, one glance’s arrow is enough.
Come knock at our door.
You wounded me. Heal me.They go to the state hoping for something of true beauty.
My poems, head to toe, are like me: without head or toe.
Nali and the Baban earth, Haji and Koye for example,Are the same as Hafiz and Shiraz, Kalim and Hamadan.
4
The land of Jezyr and Botan, the country of the Kurds,
They will turn it into Armenia.They will block the roads of the Jaff and Blbas tribes.
If you die in Garmyan, Kwestan is forbidden to you.The sweetest girls and orphans, they drag them away.
Who can hear their screams? Their pleading and begging is nonsense.Mosques will become churches, muezzins: bells.
The Bishop will become judge, the Mufti, monk.I swear a hundred times by the Quran, no courage remains.
If Armenia appears, no Kurds will remain.Raise your heads from the mud. See our situation:
We are in the hands of unjust blasphemy, far from faith.I swear to God, by God, with God: this hardship
In one moment will turn our lands into a storm.It’s not a storm of water from Mosul’s hills.
It’s a sea of rifle and cannon, an army vast as the Gulf of Oman.This story of mine, give it a few years
And it will appear before your eyes.Now, unless God ruins them,
No one will think to.Though I investigated these facts for you,
The dogs keep piling up. What mud we pour on our heads!In the meantime, make a heroic agreement
That doesn’t separate shepherd, farmer, prince, and cowherd.And swear by religion, faith, and three divorces
That to protect the religion and nation you will sacrifice yourselves.Even if following the nation is a lie to you,
It’s better for the enemy to be a stranger, not from us.Ottomans are men thin as hair. No one leans on them.
They fell into their own trap, confused and dizzy.Where is the Wali of Sanandaj, Begzada of Rawanduz,
The judgments of the Babans, the prince of Jazyr and Botan?That verse, “Walk on the earth,” that God gave,
They obey it, these dogs, by making themselves kings.Where are those days when Kurds were free and independent,
Sultans of land and nation,Owners of armies and knowledge?
Mobilize like bees, but plan quietly.
Find the furniture of war: cannon, rifle and mortar.Begging and reliance on others are useless.
The arrow is a ringing prayer, the arrowhead is action’s amulet.Why didn’t our bringer of good news, our merciful messenger,
Know any prayers the day we went into the field?As in Khewa and Bukhara, hardship doesn’t disappear if
You elevate your elders and exalt your mullahs.Every sheikh counts people as ants: black, poor,
And himself as Solomon the prophet.Not one of you have journeyed. You think the world
Is only the Ottoman Sultan and Persian King.Naqshibandy, the axis of this era, has become a refuge like me:
Without value, price, shoulder—without house, furniture, bread.
In this era, sword and pen are partners, but
My blade only sharpens my pen. Its case is a sheath.It’s known: if you put the mud and dust of the great houses
On your head, it will turn to gold.We aren’t the only ones who believe this.
The introduction to Mam and Zin shows us the state of intellectuals.As you yourselves say, “Even though being famous is good,
Any fox that has experience is braver than a lion.”No one will buy a hundred pages of poems, even for a cent.
A journal or a newspaper, its price reaches the shoulder.See the effort and courage now in the Ottoman Empire.
They own their own treasures, their own doctors, their own Sultans.Just yesterday, the nation of Sudan rose up as lions.
These days, the independent are the envy of all religions.Bulgaria and Serbia and Greece and Armenia and Qaratagh
All five won’t reach the heights of the Babans,Yet, each is independent, a state,
The owner of an army, a flag, the elements of war, a field.It is the Armenian’s right: they take courage from each other
While we quarrel and squabble.For the art of war and creation, to adjust and set the state,
They send all their representatives to Europe.Haji is a person without people.
He measures mud for others.If you listen to him, good.
If you don’t, you bring trouble on yourself.
5
I closed both doors on my precious couplets.
Don’t lust after them. I have barred the way of thieves.Wear my tough silk until doomsday. It won’t rip.
These poems’ are spun of new meaning. That’s their fiber.It’s clear my couplets are not less than Nali’s or Kurdi’s.
My rising is ill fated. My luck is asleep.
Don’t talk to me of heaven’s virgins, servants or fairies.
I have never seen or heard of such a cold moon.At midnight, if she shows her face, rising over the mountains,
All will think her the sun or Jupiter’s head over the horizon.Her hands and feet are beauty’s king. They call me slave.
In longing, I bite down on my fist.If the heart in some corner of the chest eats blood and drinks sorrow,
Haji offers it up as the sacrifice to celebrate your arrival.
6
Her hair, snakes, coils around her cheeks’ beauty mark.
On top of Adam’s imagination, the angel heaped a hundred excuses.
The night the Prophet ascended, from Sidra,
Gabriel saw your cedar height and turned from the road.When the Devil saw the altar of your arched eyebrow, he said, “Oh, God,
Why did I shake my head no to Adam’s majestic bow?Tell me, you dry sheikhs,
Why Does the bartender’s bed hair ignore his forehead?To sin against that great mouth is to understand that mouth.
I heard what I heard. What I saw, I said.
The Master’s hunter was a hunter among hunters.
How did he startle every still hawk along the riverbank into flight?Come to my heart, my eyes. It is heaven for the living.
The garden spans the heart’s desires.There is water as far as the eye can see.
Even if you kill me in the end, by God,
I won’t return her kiss.What God doesn’t want won’t happen.
What has happened, has happened.The mud I put on my head is under Haji’s right foot.
I had one heart in this world. It has ignored me for a while.
7
From both sides, the dragon of her hair coils around her young beauty.
On one side, I’m rational. On the other side, greedy and dreaming.
It is good for a man to have his own home before his eyes.
So, in this world, my eyes see only water.Above, is the water of Moses, below is the fire of Mount Sinai.
It’s a marvel that Pharaoh’s mustache neither drowns nor burns.If my eyes shed pearls, leaving no origin or traces
They haven’t fallen from their religion: the trace of emptiness remains.If an ant brings as a gift the lip of a kiss or
A locust’s leg, Solomon accepts it.An army of tears came to the aid of my face
When I saw an army of lips encircling your beauty’s castle.It’s certain: the bird of my heart, Haji, is tangled in her hair
Until the musked beauty mark becomes a place of liquid amber.
8
We also die. We become dust on traveled paths.
Tomorrow’s dawn is a burning oven.
The city’s businesses and shops will open.This one sells, this one buys. This one tears at his collar.
His father has died. This one sews a new dress. She is a bride.Without a mace, the universe has created a gristmill
To search us out and grind us down.Villagers water their farms and cut their flowers.
Animals give birth. Dogs bark. Donkeys bray.In this world, the sage who kills himself is only a shepherd.
Plato, ripped apart by grief, is only a cowherd.If this hand vanishes, another hand appears.
It isn’t clear when the conflict will end.The known world would die to know.
They didn’t find wisdom. So, don’t search.Until Haji crosses over,
It’s not possible to understand.
9
It is good for readers to understand me,
This story I tell:They don’t accept any assertion until
They study and examine it.They call out the deceit and deceiver.
All except Sheikh Nabi.Khanaqa, sheikh, tekiye—tell me:
What do they doBut teach laziness,
Collect land and stockpile wealth?People don’t examine them:
Are they toxic or opiates?Put them in a crucible like gold.
Understand if they obscure or show the way.Mullah shmullah. I beg you: don’t become one.
No one blesses another.You, busy with secrets, vainglory and desire,
Europe’s art has reached the miraculous.The Eiffel Tower reaches into the cosmos—
All other nations search underground.They measure the universe’s horizons
And put people in the mood to dance.Words on their tongues today, a hundred years from now
They could repeat for you without a single change.Each year, they learn a hundred and fifty languages,
For each year, a new name for creation and art.They are the same as fire-worshippers:
Infidels, without religion, black-faced as Hindus.Why did the peaceful prophet plead,
“Ask for your education, even if it comes from China”?This verse makes no difference between men and women.
If a mullah makes one, he isn’t truly religious.You come to learn art.
What do you care if it’s Gentile, Hindu, or Jewish?It’s necessary to keep moving, like the millstone.
Every decade, order and wages change.Laziness is the work of cursed assholes.
“A tired hand rests on a full stomach.”The people of paradise are not shepherds or cowherds.
They are artists, men of science and spirit.If worship and prayer were worth anything,
Crixus would have been a beggar on the road.Anyone who can’t earn his own living
Becomes a dervish, a snake charmer, a bagboy.In a verse, God’s beloved said,
“The profitable merchant is loveliest to God.”The hungry scientist distorts God,
Buys two loaves of bread, and isn’t scared.As he worshipped the sun, the Sufi became thirsty.
He traded a hundred prayers for a cup of water.Chest beating made the Shi’a thirsty.
He traded Hassan and Hussein for two drops.Detectives and historians say China has four hundred million people.
Head to head, Japan reaches forty million.Japan’s people are artists, creators
And look how China overtook them.Its unity, its peoples’ agreement
Is its shield against the accidents of days.Our Kurds are foolish and backward.
Together, they act like kindling, fire, and oil.If they could stand, hand in hand,
They would conquer the world, as Alexander did.Food, a place to live, cloth to cover your privates:
This is what everyone wants, beggars and kings alike.Some say everything on earth
Except Jesus is heavenly.Descriptions of wine and the beloved
Have been written in hundreds of thousands of notebooks.Like Nizami Ganjavi’s five,
Synonymous with chemistry and youth,Or like the couplets of Shirin and Farhad.
Were Haji’s poems committed to memory
Nations would be dignified,Forever God’s saints.
Who says Kurds have perception?
Enough of this shortage. They don’t listen to me.
They find fault with my true speech.They hold in their hearts the sheikh’s illusions.
He has no bread or onions, butHe hunts after ass, orphans or women.
For a pure man, there is too much
Talk of dirt and piss.Love’s hunt and the dervish’s delirium
Makes the nation poor.No one works. A rich man is a slave
To the filthy Ottomans.All would die for a thin waist and thick ass.
They would give their souls to buy a couplet of praise.My constructive couplets
Die exiled and alone.Until they die under Ottoman oppression
They won’t value my difficult couplets.Or as a western nation now say:
“What’s your name?”
I remember my father’s name was Ahmed.
My mother, Fatima, was a villager.So, Haji, enough. Enough.
I told you: this speech is useless.From the first days, Kurds, whether servants or freemen,
Have one destiny: to serve the creator.Leave it be. Your people are all snakes,
Thieves, assholes, murderers, and wild men.The gluttons are like forest bears.
Their straight is crooked, their crooked is blood-thirsty.Father, whatever you say, it is.
I suspect that this speech is worthless.Where should I get mud to pour over my head?
This plagues me.I reach for them with straight talk.
Even if I anger others, I won’t quit until I die.
10
Until the Kurdish tribes get along
They will be a house in ruins.Nations, big and small, decorate
Their countries like brides.They wear one suit, speak one tongue, share one color,
Without gossip, fault, disdain or silence.Farting, the world eats and serves.
Anything they want, they do.They are still Kurds, those pure immortals
Whose footsteps are erased with time.They remain to us, homeless and oppressed.
They are tragic as a junkyard.If you ask the one who made these conditions,
He’d say, “It works for everyone.All agreed to this condition,
For Mar’ash, for Wan, for Iraq.”This towering law is hypocrisy,
A door only half open.Hundreds of sheikhs, mullahs, princes,
Take pleasure in life and living.They bark. They somersault.
They throw mud all over the countryUntil they trash all property and pasture.
What you do, none of them do.They won’t worry even if every Kurd dies.
11
The swordsman of Kurdish eloquence,
The horseman of Baban clarity,Mustafa is Kurdi’s savior.
He turned the ghazal into a Kurdish lute.The name Sahebqran is dear to him:
On this ground, he shows himself, a steed.When he drank wedding wine, Nali became bitter.
Nali was a good teacher to many,A fountain of life, of meaning.
Salim, Mashwi, Sheikh Raza, and Khasta:Four remarkable poets.
There are few poets like Wafa’i:His handwriting, his couplets so skilled.
Ahmadi Khani authored “Mam and Zin.”All dwell in heaven’s highest places.
Though there are so many other poets,These before you here are famous.
I could show you more than theseIn an instant. Kurdish poets, old and new,
Are untold.What left a trace, what I saw,
Is what I say here in shorthand.From the start, honorable Mawlana,
The lofty Naqshibandy of the one God.Abdulrahman, the pure in character,
Practices Ghaos’ way, a holy man.Of the Jaff poets, Mawlawi and Khana are healers enough.
Of the Hamawand, relatives of ours,There are many poets to know.
Their sharp tongues silenceThe spear’s head and the dagger’s mouth.
The fields of Kirkuk and mountains of HawramanHave limitless poets, poets without end.
If I wrote only their names,There wouldn’t be book enough.
The land from Shiraz to the BabansIs all one school they call “Goran.”
From Mosul to Baban lands,The Jaff claimed as their own.
Enough, Kurdish people, have no shameIn our nation’s couplets.
If the name is our own, or from Sna or Sulaimani,We don’t count it among the greats.
I say our gain comes from ourSilk worms and honey bees.
There is no calm or rest or sleepNight or day, until they create it.
The Ottomans, we know,Think us gorillas.
The Persians, as we know,Have pleasure for a mother, fiction for a father.
One makes you drink from the cup,The other makes you wear the dress.
The translations are by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse. In a few instances, I have made minor adjustments to the wording of her translations, but full credit for translating the collection belongs to her.
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