Poetry Month

A Lyric in Exile

If my feet will arrive again, at my home
   with sobs I'll kiss my land's soil.

If I'll be free from the pressures of this exile
   like a dove I'll travel to my nest.

In this foggy air and this alien twilight
   with tears I'll take my road to my habitat.

My heart, is pressed more than this rainy air,
I'll liberate it, perhaps with my weeping at night
   perhaps in my grieved chest I'll take refuge,
   as my heart has taken again its complaint.

I am a lonely tree which fell in the wilderness' embrace,
   from which I separated my heart and its buds.

Where is the house of fate that I'll ask;
   did it have nothing but pain in its treasure?

A vain thought I inhibited to struggle with my fate,
   life made me surrender to its lashes.

All the universe to others I'll spare,
   I'll be satisfied with my seeds and animal.

Where is my town? that warm and dusty town?
   that I'll search again,
       my identity from its soil.

--Hussein Elhami (translated from the Persian from Shmuel Shoshani)