مرثیه ‌هایِ خاک

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.