Childhood Poem by Nassy Fesharaki

It was a room, plastered white with lamps in niches of walls
Traces of pencil, and heights with their names, charcoal lines
Painters and projectors, the lantern, and the kerosene lamps
Grains, the summer wheat harvested after the pain, in hiding
From the birds, rats and the bandits, visitors of now and then
Out the knife’s blade from horn sheath he reached for pocket
Nails, workers’ nails, harder than bone of the lamb and sheep
He cut, expertly, short and then the toes, all he well-trimmed
Cracks in his dry heels, gorges, he filled with drops, melted fat
Of tail of the lamb, a big white circle-like, Persian one, skinned
This boy, I wear socks, shoes and cut nail with clipper, not men
I am nothing, spoiled boy, inexperienced to touch a man’s knife
The dogs, it is said, are friends of man, include also pocket knife