I Am Still Thinking About This Crow
I am still thinking
about this crow
that with its pair of black scissors—
by two brisk swishing sounds—
cut an aslant arc
on the matte paper of the sky
over the toasted wheat farms
of the Yush valley;
I am still thinking
about this crow
that facing the nearby mountains
said something—
with its lung’s dry cawing—
that the mountains echoed it, baffled,
for such a long time
in their rocky heads.
Sometimes I ask myself that at high noon,
flying over the toasted farms of wheat,
to cross over a grove of poplars,
what that crow—
a crow with such stubbornly sable color,
with such rigid, definite presence—
could have said
with such fury and bawl
to those old mountains—
those slumbering pious hermits—
that they, in the midday of summer,
would repeat it over and over
for such a long time?
Ahmad Shamlu
(translated from Persian by Parviz Omidvar & Iraj Omidvar)
Ahma Shamlu (1925-2000) was an Iranian poet, playwright and novelist.
[…] English translation of the poem I Am Still Thinking About This Crow, by Iranian poet, playwright and novelist Ahmad Shamlu, describes a dry and quiet summer’s day in […]