Chess like City, Tehran
A Poem by Rosa Jamali
Translated from original Persian into English by the Author

This is the city that has fallen asleep in my blood vessels
Nested in my brain like an obscure network
Or it has spared some parts of my brain cells into the wind

In the morning things were unprecedented
Just a watchdog that was afraid of margins of the yard
Prevailing into the eyelids
In the morning things were unprecedented.

Signals, signals, and parasites bombarded the satellite TV!

Tehran,
Like a white sheet, stagnant on the washing hanging
Yet things are fine,
I had attracted the waves;
This scorching hot weather is making me sick.

I'm the only driver turning into the highways
Railings like parallel lines keeping us all together

Is this turning going to turn for ever?

This metal has always been scarce
Lack of iron and minerals,
Mercury as fast as death is shadowing the table frame now
Temperature's just dropped!

Tehran is the city in my veins fast asleep!

Railings are putting us into sleep
The city is collapsing in its four quarters....

'Done with your breakfast?
Shall we exit from the right? '

The prism, turning and turning into the wind
And the wet laundry on the rope is fluttering in the wind

By watching I feel pins and needles in my arms
The chessboard you made
With all its dead bodies,
Surfing over the waters and waters of the metropolis!