Proverbs And Sayings Poem by Omid Varzandeh

Kajal Ahmed

Translation from Kurdish: Omid Varzandeh

The mountain is proud.
Never opens his heart.
Says: I've never been in love.
Hides his tears.
Wrinkles his forehead, doesn't smile.
That's why, when he erupts
his core spews
fiery water
all over.

- -so the volcano said


The gale said:
I dislike the shape of this world.
So I change it, destroy it.
I dislike it too, I replied,
so I will replace it with love.

- so says the breeze



After the night, night comes again:
The day too is night.
But in it burns
a lantern of a small sun.

- so says the poet, not the rhymester


Don't hang on me the beautiful
*Grass-seller's image.
Now I know
even the self
is a bonded woman
of colonialism.

- so sighed a thousand year old
cracked and white-haired
wall of a house.



* The grass -seller was an icon of beauty who was kidnapped, taken abroad and returned years later as a broken woman.




The way was blocked.
I smuggled in the words.
They shot at me.
They hit my horse.
My flowers spilt out of the basket.
They shouted: Who are you?
I didn't reply.
I knew the gun cannot hear the pen.

- so said Shehrezad


Between no way and inevitability
There is an old bridge
which connects
this end of our world to the other end.
The brave lover always crosses it.
The hesitant lover always gets left behind.

- so the saying said