Long Poem of Loneliness by Garous Abdolmalekian
Long Poem of Loneliness
Garous Abdolmalekian
Translated by Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Idra NoveyHe’s leaning against this late hour
pushing open the creaking door of his age
his temperature drops
causing snow in his eyes.He stands up
to go sit by the window
realizes he has been sitting
by the window for hours.A bird
pecks at the corroded corner of the sky…
Does it want to die more beautifully?
Does one always need to fall to the ground in order to die?
Does the earth
fill the mouths of the dead
to stop them from describing what they’ve seen?
Has he grown his beard out
to conceal all these questions
in the creases of his face?Is it possible to rise
to peck at bits of his life with his beak
and place them in his children’s mouths?He opens the window
the oranges of life are blood oranges
he does not understand the reason for the moon
he does not understand the reason for the all-empty sky.He turns off the light
lies on the bed he discarded
years ago
he lies down upon the faraway
falls asleep upon the faraway
and when the phone rings,
he has to get back on a road as long as a man’s life.On the other side of the line
lies the severed corpse of his brother
who exploded while holding a phone in his hand
a corpse now gathering his last sentences
from the ground.On the other end of the line
a woman
calls from twenty-seven years ago
just to say,
“Son, the oven gas is on
I am dead
and your sisters now
are sorrows growing taller every day…
Take care of your sorrows
attend to their homework
talk to them.”On the other end of the call
it is I
who want to haul him out of this poem
who want to save him from these words.But someone is busy
scrutinizing the phone wires
someone is busy
a surveillance of my relationship with myself
and the scratchy noise you hear
is from his knife, carving out the words…
Blood circulates in the wires
and the red eternity of the dial tone
pours into his ears
drop by drop.It is his loneliness
that withers the flowers on his shirt.The tea steeps in his mouth
his life’s buttons have been left undone
and part of his soul is hanging out.He draws the letter from the drawer
will he get warmer from reading it
or burning it?He lights his cigarette
and drives it like a crooked peg into the wall
yesterday is over
tomorrow is over
and with each exhale the gray faraway of life
draws closer to his mouth.He has touched both sides of death
like the front and back cover of this book
which he closes in the middle
tosses on the floor
but it doesn’t fall
it rises
and flies off
with the two lines of its story.Now a couple of white birds
are crossing the sky’s mind like tiny words.Now they are carrying oranges
to other seasons.Now they are leaving the stage
empty.He draws shut the curtain of his eyelids
like a tortoise
retreating into its stony world.
SELECTED BY AJANAé DAWKINS
I stumbled across Garous Abdolmalekian’s work through Poem-a-Day in 2020 with his poem, “The Ruins of Bam”. I was so struck by Garous’ language that I immediately ordered his collection Lean Against This Late Hour, where Long Poem of Loneliness is published. The way he examines a lifetime of accumulated grief through the disruption of reality—the dead speaking on telephones, sisters as sorrows made this poem stick to my ribs. It haunted me. I would read to friends, mentors, colleagues, and watch everyone in the room shift shift. It brought the intangible feeling that comes over a space when everyone has been transported by incredible work.
At the time that I learned about Garous’ work, I was deeply fixated with the variances in language, the limitations of English, and the failure of translation to make something complete for another context when the secondary language does not have the capacity to hold what the first language could. I kept thinking to myself, if this is how Garous’ work makes me feel in translation—with me knowing the failures of English…if in translation Garous can make me feel like I am trapped in a dream that I cannot shake free from…I wondered what in the experience of his work english has stolen from me.
Irregardless of that wondering, I am grateful for the work of translators to make something that would have been wholly inaccessible to me, something I can enter.
ABOUT AJANAé DAWKINS
Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, conceptual artist and theologian. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner and more. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX won the New Delta Review’s chapbook prize. Ajanaé cohosts the VS Podcast at the Poetry Foundation.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Lean Against This Late Hour by Garous Abdolmalekian, published by Penguin Books, 2020. (Available direct from Penguin Books • Also on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
A vivid, “mesmerizing” (New York Times Magazine) portrait of life in the shadow of violence and loss, for readers of both English and Persian
The first selection of poems by renowned Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian to appear in English, this collection is a captivating, disorienting descent into the trauma of loss and its aftermath. In spare lines, Abdolmalekian conjures surreal, cinematic images that pan wide as deftly as they narrow into intimate focus. Time is a thread come unspooled: pain arrives before the wound, and the dead wait for sunrise.
Abdolmalekian resists definitive separations between cause and effect, life and death, or heaven and hell, and challenges our sense of what is fixed and what is unsettled and permeable. Though the speakers in these poems are witnesses to the deforming effects of grief and memory, they remain alive to curiosity, to the pleasure of companionship, and to other ways of being and seeing. Lean Against This Late Hour illuminates the images we conjure in the face of abandonment and ruin, and finds them by turns frightening, bewildering, ethereal, and defiant. “This time,” a disembodied voice commands, “send us a prophet who only listens.”” (Source)
ABOUT GAROUS ABDOLMALEKIAN
Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian is the author of six poetry collections: Lean Against this Late Hour (2020), Acceptance (2015), Hollows (2011), Lines Change Places in the Dark (2008), The Faded Colors of the World (2005), and The Hidden Bird (2002). He is a recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award (2003) and the winner of the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize (2006). Abdolmalekian poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish. He serves as editor… (more)
Read more poems by Garous Abdolmalekian • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Facebook • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 56 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Read more translations by Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Idra Novey • Or view more translated poems
- Explore other works in pursuit of: loneliness • memory • grief • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
