Iran poet: Sequences to freedom

Sequences to freedom is a book of short poems written in February by Iranian poet Ali Abdolrezaei that has been translated into English by Abol Froushan.

Abdolrezaei, from Gilan province, is now a refugee living in London.

Abdolrezaei said: “I never thought that one day I would write purely political poetry, but the inhuman atrocity dealt by the Iranian regime nowadays is so beyond proportion that it is politics that is writing these poems.”

Below are two of the translated poems published in Sequences to Freedom.

* * *

1
You are shot there
so your red cells flower ... in Freedom Avenue
you die
so snow
with its white cells
soft and softly
shroud you
hide you
so an ill wind won’t blow
to steel you who were not one of them*

You are not one of them
your arteries are arteries of a city
that which beats in Revolution Square
is still your heart
which sends off
one by one
all taxis down any street that leads
like a dark vein
toward my heart
that is in Freedom Square

We both fight in the same street
you are shot there
I die here

* In the recent resurgence of the Green movement in Iran, in solidarity with the February 2011 Egyptian revolution, a university student was killed by a bullet from the security forces. The next day the security forces claimed that the victim was a supporter of the regime killed by the demonstrators.

2.
They are proud of the truncheons
and the rifles
they don’t know
they beat people
they don’t know
they shoot people
what do they know
one of these days
the lump they have planted in our throat
will explode like a bomb