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Mohsen Hosseinkhani was born in Iran in 1988. He began reciting poems professionally in cultural institutes in 2007. To date, he has published nine collections of his poetry and many of his poems have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish. The poems selected here, in versions by Tahereh Safaei and Imogen Wade in consultation with the poet himself, are the first to have been translated into English.
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Imogen Wade was born in 1998 and raised in Harlow, Essex. She studied English at the University of Exeter, with a year abroad at Vassar College in New York. She currently works in mental health. She won the National Poetry Competition 2023 and has had poems published in Poetry Review, PN Review and The London Magazine.
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Mohsen Hosseinkhani: Sixteen Poems from Melodies for Enduring the World
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Every time you ask me how much I love you
I answer with a kiss
I use my lips to find the truest answer
In the shortest time
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People say you can make a wish
If you see a new moon
I see you every night
And make a wish every night
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Let me love you deeply
For fish
A sign that says
Swimming’s forbidden
Has no meaning
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She supposes that
Time has stolen her beauty
I look at her
She is the same
The cherry tree at the beginning of spring
Bends just a little
Under the burden of its blossom
***
A farmer loved his farm
After his death
His clothes were put on the scarecrow
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A worker falls from scaffolding
The news of his death
Isn’t published in any paper
Tomorrow
The other workers eat their meals
From the pages of a newspaper
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I wanted to hide your memory
In my heart
Without letting anybody know
I didn’t know that graves without markers
Break the heart
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When the sea disappeared
Only the whales
Understood
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Soil smells like death
But water tastes like life
I am a river that remained for you
Let them call me a marsh
You are now the waterlily
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There is a story of a wolf
Who blinded our fathers
And we have thought so much
About killing our brothers
That our clothes smell of blood
Now we’re in the dark
And every hand that reaches out to us
Is a rotten rope
How can we save a well
That has collapsed into itself?
And the dream
That others have for us
Is only a nightmare
What else could it be?
The story of the wolf
Began with a shepherd
Whose lie divides the flock
He claimed to be a prophet
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For your coming
I counted the leaves
Now
It is time to measure snow
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I want you to come so you can stay
Grapes are sweet
But wine is something else
***
I love my house because of its window
Its window because of the moon
And the moon because of you
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We were both candles in a box
You ended up at a birthday party
Saved from melting with a wish
I ended up in a cemetery
Burning on a grave
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It started with empty walls
Then the first photograph
You love her
She loved you
The walls will be fully covered one day
A nail is a good tool to fix loneliness
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We love liberty
We love liberty very much
Damn us and our love
We imprison whatever we love
The High Window 