Between Staying and Going
Between staying and going we made up a story
veiled in obvious irony.
The little we had
was squandered on this story.
June 18, 1960
From Instants and Eternity (Nil Press, 1964)
Union
Beyond the borders of your body, I love you.
Give me mirrors and eager moths,
light and wine,
the high sky and the wide arch of the bridge
Give me birds and rainbows
and keep playing that last melody
in your scale.
*
Beyond the borders of my body,
I love you—
in that distant beyond
where the body’s call fades
where every last flicker of fire, pulse, and longing
ebbs into nothingness,
where meaning sheds its words
like a spirit
leaving the corpse to vultures
in the final hour . . .
*
Beyond the limits of love,
I love you—
beyond veils and colors.
Beyond the limits of our bodies
promise me union.
May 1964
Shirgah
From Aida in the Mirror (Nil Press, 1964)
The Day After
In his final breath
the last sage who cherished life
forged a chariot of war
that transformed its fumes and weapon’s discharge
into an elixir
fertilizing the soil
and purifying the air!
January 21, 1993
From The Tale of Mahan’s Restlessness (Maziar Press, 2000)
Nocturnal (Among the Eternal Suns)
Among the eternal suns
your beauty
is an anchor—
a sun
that frees me
from the dawn of all stars.
Your gaze
is the fall of tyranny—
a gaze that dressed
my bare soul
in love
so fully that now
the darkest night of never
feels like nothing but a comedy of ironies.
Your eyes told me
tomorrow
is a new day—
eyes that spark love!
And now, your love:
a weapon
to wrestle with my fate.
*
I had thought the sun lay beyond the horizon,
that no escape remained but an early exit,
or so I had believed.
Then came Aida, undoing the eternal exit.
*
Among the eternal suns
your beauty
is an anchor—
your gaze
the fall of tyranny—
and your eyes told me
tomorrow
is a new day.
August 1962
From Aida in the Mirror (Nil Press, 1964)
. . . Death
I’ve never feared death,
even if its grip were more crushing than the banal.
What I fear—truly fear—is dying in a place
where a gravedigger’s pay
outweighs
the worth of human freedom.
*
To seek
to find
and then to freely choose
to build
a fortress
of your own self—
If death is prized above all this,
then heaven forbid I should ever fear death.
January 1963
From Aida in the Mirror (Nil Press, 1964)
from Elegies of the Earth
Ahmad Shamlou
translated from the Persian by Niloufar Talebi
Listen to "Nocturnal (Among the Eternal Suns)" read in the original Persian by the translator:
To translate Ahmad Shamlou is to reckon with his force: a literary revolutionary whose poetry fuses modernist experimentation, political resistance, and profound humanism. Over a thirteen-year journey, I translated his work not as a neutral act, but as an embodied, at times defiant, expression, shaped by the urgency of bringing this singular voice from the margins of global literary consciousness to the West.
Building on the work of his predecessor, Nima Yushij, Shamlou helped expand Persian poetry into free verse and a socially committed mode that became a defining force in the evolution of modern Iranian poetry.
But his poems are not easy to bring across. Their abstraction, ambiguity, and cultural allusions often resist the more literal clarity expected in English. The danger in translating a figure like Shamlou is flattening his radicalism or exoticizing his difference.
My aim was to preserve Shamlou’s defiance—against repression, conformity, and silence—while contemporizing the language for a new generation of readers. I revised again and again until the tone no longer echoed the mid-twentieth century English that might have once felt like a parallel. I stripped the translations down to their sonic and emotional core, guided not only by fidelity but by resonance.
Some choices were formal: streamlining punctuation for clarity, omitting diacritics for readability, and adapting rhythm to suit the musicality of English. Others were intentional acts of interpretation: opening space for female or outsider readings without diminishing Shamlou’s own masculine point of view.
Poetry was public speech in Shamlou’s world, shouted in streets, censored by regimes, mourned and memorized by generations. I wanted to capture that spirit in a contemporary culture where that mode is forgotten and discouraged. Translating Shamlou is not just a literary exercise—it is a political act, a gesture of alignment with his belief that poetry should incite, uplift, and endure.
These five poems—selected for their intimacy and subversion—carry that charge. They are drawn from Elegies of the Earth, a collection of eighty poems I curated to honor the great poet at his centennial and to reignite poetry’s radical potential for our time. Shamlou’s voice lives on in recorded recitations, now widely accessible online, offering a powerful entry into his work.
Building on the work of his predecessor, Nima Yushij, Shamlou helped expand Persian poetry into free verse and a socially committed mode that became a defining force in the evolution of modern Iranian poetry.
But his poems are not easy to bring across. Their abstraction, ambiguity, and cultural allusions often resist the more literal clarity expected in English. The danger in translating a figure like Shamlou is flattening his radicalism or exoticizing his difference.
My aim was to preserve Shamlou’s defiance—against repression, conformity, and silence—while contemporizing the language for a new generation of readers. I revised again and again until the tone no longer echoed the mid-twentieth century English that might have once felt like a parallel. I stripped the translations down to their sonic and emotional core, guided not only by fidelity but by resonance.
Some choices were formal: streamlining punctuation for clarity, omitting diacritics for readability, and adapting rhythm to suit the musicality of English. Others were intentional acts of interpretation: opening space for female or outsider readings without diminishing Shamlou’s own masculine point of view.
Poetry was public speech in Shamlou’s world, shouted in streets, censored by regimes, mourned and memorized by generations. I wanted to capture that spirit in a contemporary culture where that mode is forgotten and discouraged. Translating Shamlou is not just a literary exercise—it is a political act, a gesture of alignment with his belief that poetry should incite, uplift, and endure.
These five poems—selected for their intimacy and subversion—carry that charge. They are drawn from Elegies of the Earth, a collection of eighty poems I curated to honor the great poet at his centennial and to reignite poetry’s radical potential for our time. Shamlou’s voice lives on in recorded recitations, now widely accessible online, offering a powerful entry into his work.
Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000) was one of Iran’s most influential cultural figures. A poet, translator, editor, and journalist, he authored over seventy books, including eighteen volumes of poetry, essays, translations, and an ongoing encyclopedia of folklore. Known also by his pen name, Alef Bamdad (“Dawn”), Shamlou became the leading voice of Iran’s modernist vanguard alongside figures like Forough Farrokhzad. Through bold innovations in language, form, and content, he helped complete the shift from classical forms to free verse, forging a modern, socially engaged poetics attuned to Iran’s struggles for justice and freedom. Synthesizing Eastern and Western influences—and blending high and popular registers—he democratized literary expression without sacrificing depth. A champion of the “everyman,” he remained committed to human rights and to the power of literature to incite change. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Shamlou continues to inspire generations in Iran and around the world.
Niloufar Talebi is an author, translator, and multidisciplinary creator whose work spans literature, performance, and creativity coaching. Her longtime engagement with Ahmad Shamlou has inspired multiple projects, including the opera Abraham in Flames, her TEDx talk, the hybrid memoir Self-Portrait in Bloom (l’Aleph, 2019), and the video-poem “Funeral Address.” Her forthcoming project, Elegies of the Earth: Selected Poems of Ahmad Shamlou (World Poetry Books, 2025), marks the poet’s centennial. She is also the editor and translator of Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World (North Atlantic Books, 2008). Talebi has presented her work internationally at venues including Carnegie Hall, Stanford University, and the Tbilisi Book Festival. A Fulbright U.S. Scholar and recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, she treats translation as a radical, creative act that bridges languages, cultures, and generations.
