1.
God, I see.
I deny my own actions.
You gave me a heart and tongue
That desire and lust have made my enemy.I want to empty my heart of all but You,
To remember only You, forget all others.Then, my tongue would chant Your name.
I could become the servant of Your places.
If I remain as I am,
I will sow evil names like seeds.If only Your trance fell over my heart
And I kicked away all and how I was.The head is free as the rooftops.
I fell into the trade of desire, beloveds.
The raider’s crown on my head,
I would rule sea and desert.Or seeing You, that light,
I would be a moth,My soul a moth,
My self a sacrifice.Many are moths for Sham, a beauty.
Let me also burn for beauty.
2.
God without need, without family, without intimates,
Make me proud.
Bring me two good people.
Let the first not be my focus.
Really, no one need be my security.
No one is harmed by my actions.
Hate and horror do not corrode my heart.
With your wrathful arrow, wound
Any mean thing imagined about me.
The second: conviction.
Free me from greed.
Your gift, whatever it is, delights me.
When I need nothing from the world’s people,
I will know You,
You and You alone.
I will weave for no one,
I will leech from no house,
I’m so deaf, God, to knowledge of You.
Give me a ready mind so I may know you.
You lead into good work.
If I don’t sin on my own,
No one forces me to it.If my sin is at Your order,
How can my punishment be as well?
I don’t deny Your justice.
My inner self puts me in the path of sin.
God, accept me.
Forget my wealth or poverty.
God, this heart you gave me,
I don’t want it ever empty of Your remembrance.
I want a flower to rise from my mud,
Colored and scented in remembrance of Your judgment.
The Cause, You plead, “Do it,” yet withhold.
You plead, “Don’t do it,” and put the Devil in it.
3.
The high stars are bright at night.
Like me, they have no joy, no peace, no rest.
For years, we have been friends during these sleepless nights.
We are vagabonds.
At night, we can’t put our heads on a pillow.
I am up and down in the empty hand of misery.
They,
Like the doomed and ruined Kurdish tribes,
Are strays in the sky.
By night, they are dew:
The water the grass drinks.
Dawn lifts the fog of my watery eyes.
Last night, near dawn, they cried over me.
They saw me distraught, between friends and enemies.
I’ve never seen such sincerity as in their tears for me.
It was their tears, but I mistook them for dew.
I charged the wind,
“Why do they consume sorrow?
They are not like us.
They live nearest God’s house.”
They responded in dew on the leaves:
“The sparks of your evil lit the sky.
The great Kurds blew on the flame.
Their breath, their smoke, makes our eyes water.”
4.
It is new year’s day.
Nawroz has come:
An old Kurdish celebration of joy and good news.
Until last year, our hope was caged.
The pale flower of new spring was only the blood of youth.
That red brought morning’s good news from the high horizon
Of the Kurds.
Far and wide, that red took this news.
It was Nawroz that put a fire in their liver
And the youth went lovingly toward old death.
Here, the sun rises from the state’s high mountain.
It’s the blood of martyrs shining in the twilight.
Now, new in the history of this nation,
A girl’s breast is a battle shield.
There’s no need to moan and weep for our homeland’s martyrs.
They don’t die.
They live in the hearts of the nation.
5.
Summer came to us like an oven’s flame
Pouring handfuls of smoke into Shahrazur.
Hair accepted scorched beauty.
The daffodil collapsed.
Pines, like light, fell into smoke.
The violet’s neck became crooked as an animal’s.
The moon’s flash and gleam were few.
The universe was murky as Damawand.
I wish I could name this flame love
And that it had caught flame in the hearts of patriots.
This elation would have beautified the heart
And burned people’s thornier desires.
I beg you, God of Life and Living,
Don’t let us squander this chance.
Once, now, let the nation’s boys work.
Let them sell only Kurdish products.
6.
The universe doesn’t allow happiness forever.
He who is a man must live door to door.
I see only my stepfather’s sky.
It has no symbol in the shape of the full moon.
He buried everything in that garden with his own hands.
He didn’t leave a tree to throw a shadow.
Spring came.
He didn’t leave us a poet
Whose moans, like a nightingale’s, could affect us.
Fire spreads in the hills and burns
Anyone celebrating Nawroz.
Except the violet and tulip,
Nothing bows like the elderly
Whose pained livers double them over.
Sleep is death.
Even if the wolf of destiny arrives
And sinks his teeth into our legs,
No one wakes.
He hogtied our four limbs and stole us.
Imagine:
You have no Eid.
You wear horns.
They say,
“Count yourself lucky.
A worse day than this might come.”
When I fell into the pond,
I swam to survive,
But I desired the depth,
Not the river’s swift current.
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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