Persian Poetry Quotes

“Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.”
― Rumi

“I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd: 'I Myself am Heav'n and Hell”
― Omar Khayyam

“You think of yourself
as a citizen of the universe.
You think you belong
to this world of dust and matter.
Out of this dust
you have created a personal image,
and have forgotten
about the essence of your true origin”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

“Woman is the light of God.”
― Rumi

“Farsi Couplet:
Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi
Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari


English Translation:
I have become you, and you me,
I am the body, you soul;
So that no one can say hereafter,
That you are someone, and me someone else.”
― Amir Khusrau, The Writings of Amir Khusrau: 700 Years After the Prophet: A 13th-14th Century Legend of Indian-Sub-Continent

“The Water said to the dirty one, “Come here.”

The dirty one said, “I am too ashamed.”

The water replied, “How will your shame be washed away without me?”
― Rumi

“A wealth you cannot imagine
flows through you.
Do not consider what strangers say.
Be secluded in your secret heart-house,
that bowl of silence.”
― Rumi

“I died a lot
to live a little
with you”
― Yaghma Golroei

“Oh, come with old Khayyàm, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.”
― Omar Khayyam

“you’re already naked in this world
in this time
in this life
beacause your next love
your next hunger
you next laughter
and even your next tear
may never come”
― Baharak Sedigh

“The lover I am; it befits me to burn;
but what is the reason for your weeping and burning?
The candle replied: ‘Oh my ill-fated lover,
a honey-sweet [shirin] friend went away from me.
Someone like Shirin has deserted me;
there is fire on my head, as it was on Farhad’s.’
The candle continued, while a painful flood
each moment gushed down on his yellow cheeks:
'Pretender, this love is not your game,
as you have no patience, no strength to stand.
Untouched you shrink from a single flame,
whereas I stand still until I am consumed.
If the fire of love has scorched your wings,
look at me: it burned me from head to foot.”
― Sa'dī, Golestan

“صبا زان لولی شنگول سرمست
چه داری اگهی؟ چونست حالش؟”
― حافظ شيرازي

“Suppose That I'm Inevitable
Suppose that I'm inevitable
Even the veins of my right hand
Cross you from the drafts.

On my smooth nails
The breeze
Which is not from the sky
Is curving you
Either the veins of my right hand
Is running short
On my pulse.

Rolled along my fingers
Vanished
Not repeated forever
For the second.
I'm a half
Since the first.

The veins of my neck cross you all.

If the warmth of my ten fingers
Seized on your torn pieces of breath
All is over
With the dead-end alleys
all in oblivion.


(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“Tehran Cuddled In My Arms
Tehran in my arms
At the agony of death
In my bosom
Is an aged bull
Which is mooing
Yet tamed and dull
Rubbing its figure on my hair.
But tomorrow,
It 'll be a dead body
And the dustman will collect it
I'm a refuge of this kicking bitch dog
And I'll leave it to God...


Rosa Jamali


(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“Like A Hanged Pitcher
Like a hanged pitcher,
No drink is pouring off me
It's natural to get numbed gradually.

Pig-headed seashells!
This boasting sky,
Is an anchor
which has fallen on my lap
This dizzy sky!
The moon's been cleared
A shadow's coming after me
Barefooted on my dreams
You used to run!

Enjoyed?!
Numb!

All my veins are connected to this land...

Like a hanged pitcher
Joyful of this sky
One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole.

And it was over!
The Gulf was over!
You waved hands.

Like a hanged pitcher,
It's simple!
I lost the game
And gambled away...

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“The Angles Of The Frame
1
Many years have passed since the day,
I looked into a mirror, saw a wrinkled face.
I've been disclosed to the bulging sands of my bed.

2
Aeons of breath account for the many veins in my atrium.

3
The bull I breast-fed for many years
And I've submerged into the frame.

4
I knew the justifications were hard,
Hard as against the current of water.
No news from the ambiguous points
something uncommon.
It can't be justified by natural rules,
many years we've been tangled on it.

5
This usurped land is a part of all buried treasure islands
No finger points in any direction.
Lost in the dead-end alleys
Tracing images without a compass.

6
Horse pounding pulse sing endlessly in my blood.
My kinsmen of horses…
Blood-line linked as to rays of a circle
like roots of a tree growing deep on the roof.

7
You can't stop the hands of the clock.
You can't come back to the broken minutes.
The days have been arranged one after another.
The knights have left the game one after another.

8
There was a straw mat where you fell asleep.
I became numb, quite used to the stillness of the house.

9
Was something supposed to get away from the core
to join us?
A century has passed and we still live in this house.


10
Dimensions have shifted
Not exclusive to the roof
The letters approved us as the residents of the house
They ran away as the convicts
And we got used to the standstill.

(Translated from original Persian into English by Rosa Jamali)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“I have heard that in the day of Hope and Fear the Merciful One will pardon the evil for the sake of the good. If you see evil in my words, do the same.”
― Saadi

“He begins to recite some verses. A Persian poem. I don’t stop desiring when my desire Is fulfilled, when my mouth wins The red lips of my beloved, When my soul expires in the sweetness of her breath. Arslan smiles, he has recognized the inimitable Hafez of Shiraz, which is confirmed by the last couplet: And you will always invoke the name of Hafez In the company of the sad and the brokenhearted.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“When I was a kid, I had a passion too. It was poetry but I knew becoming a poet wouldn’t put food on the table. The fact that I couldn’t do anything about it made me miserable. It made me despise the world. It made me despise life.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“The white butterly
slowly sinks
into the wine of your age.”
― Bijan Elahi, High Tide of the Eyes

“It is obvious to all who are wise that the foundation of speech will not be demolished by tempestuous events.
(translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould)”
― Jahan Malek Khatun, Divan of Jahan Malek Khatun: Persia's Great Female Sufi Poet

“Newspaper letters review the deserted cities
& drowse at the windows in pale sun & the evening breeze’s rales.

The train has stopped.
("Anna Karenina / October 18, 1910," Translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould )”
― Hasan Alizadeh, House Arrest

“Sanctions levied
Sanctions heavy
Break my back
But you will not end me

Many have assailed

Many have failed
Pack after pack
Blood shed but to no avail

Had my share of years
Had my share of tears
SAVAK to crack
A century of polluted atmosphere

This is my land
This is my clan
Turn the clock back
I'm as old as the history of man

Gone are the golden days
Gone are the golden ways
Stopped in my tracks
Time will lead me out of this maze

Keep my people in pain
Keep my people in chains
Wrapped in my flag
The end welcomes tyranny's campaign

Levy your sanctions
Heavy my reaction
From The Burnt City to Ganzak
I, Simurgh, will rise from the ashes

History will go round
History will go down
Evil, domestic and foreign
Will burn to the ground

Time bears witness
Time bears justice
Our mystic misfortune
A lingering dark nimbus

Rise up my wings
Rise up my kings
This majestic sovereign
Will be reborn once again”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“The Clock Cell
A Poem by Rosa Jamali


Something happens to die
And the sunlight which has been soaking is wet and obscure
If I carry on the lines
The frozen object which has been captured in your hands will drop
Otherwise, the day has come to an end.

Void
When I get home; staring at all those cubical shapes;
Standstill current of water
And the sunlight which is never damp
On the blank sheets of writing
bursting into tears over old sheets on my bed.

The elements
Its essence has been painted by my blood
The rain of cats and dogs on my field
The moon is encompassing the land!

Here with the frostbite on the iron post,
I left the time on the river bank
Time was a whim slipped away from my fingers
The moments have been cleaned and cleared.

The wall has turned blue
Me and the black gown
Have taken the flow of the river.

It's a calf death breast-fed.

What is it?
Sediments on a neutral background
It could be in a different colour
It's been many days since I started walking on the rope
The creased moon is hanging down the ceiling.

Blizzard
A flimsy stone
The frostbite on the window glass
The bridge has fallen down
Silence on a metal tape
Ending to a blind full stop.


(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“Two Black Buttons

My eyes are used to the dark mood
For I have sewed two black buttons into my eye SOCKETS
And you are gonna touch me
In this Bleak House
All over the blackness...

-----------------------
A POEM BY ROSA JAMALI
TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH
TRANSLATED BY THE AUTHOR

دکمه

چشم هام به نور کم عادت کرده اند
به آن ها دکمه دوختم
در تاریکی لمسم کن

-------
شعری از رُزا جمالی
از مجموعه ی این ساعت شنی که به خواب رفته است”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“Knotweed by Rosa Jamali
I've turned to an annual plant, shielded and armed, from the genus of hollyhocks and broad leaves
Whole five-thousand-year history is turning over my head
It was the moment that you were buried with no shroud
And I'm the weeds and icicles of this land, …
Had been climbing over the flames, it was a black ladder, burning my sole feet
It was the moment that I had chopped my heart, you had sucked my blood in that woundless bowl
Had been growing like a wildflower, had been living for millions of years
In Syriac over my body:
Nail-shaped herbs had written some letters.
I'm the genius of thorns with wounded heels of thousands of miles travelling in the oasis
My blistered feet, weary and my parched lips
Shattered by the mountain ranges I had been fighting with my claws
My roots are extended with the fluent liquid in the vessels
Lilacs had grown over my arms and now I've turned to the ivy as if burning in the fire
I left my name on the land I stepped, …

And who's this weeping human child, lamenting two thousand years in my arms? Still weeping? ! Always weeping? !
I've been raising this child for six thousand years
I've grown this Persian hero to send him to the battlefield
Breastfed him
And he has grown out of my eyes
This extreme light which has blinded me…

(TRANSLATED From original Persian to English by the Poet)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“The Last Street of Tehean
Facing the airport, all that's now left in my grasp
is a crumpled land
that fits in the palm of my hand.

Facing wavering sunbeams—
a sun that is angry and mute.
All the way from the salt sands of Dasht-e Lut,
it came, the dream
that forced my fingers' shift,
that set my teeth on edge.
A muted breeze,
whirlwind spun from sand dunes
all the way, even through the back alley.

Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?

No longer than the palm of the hand, a short leap,
exactly the length you had predicted.

A huge grave in which to lay the longest night of the year to sleep.

Sleep has quit our eyelids for other pastures,
has dropped its anchor at the shores of garden ponds,
has lost the chapped flaking of its lips,
poor thing!

Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?

With scissors - snip, snip - they are severing something.
The alphabet shavings strewn on the ground,
are they the letters that spell our family name?

With every zig-zag,
you cage my mother's breath,
her footprints fading
in the shifting sands.

Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?
No.
A strange land-shape form.
I will not return.
I left behind a shoe, one of a pair,
for you to put on and follow after me.



Translated from Persian to English by Franklin Lewis”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“The Flintstone
Block No.1:
A whole nation has created the kindling
Which owes you desperately
But it hasn’t been specified
Whether it’s the flintstone
Or A firestorm?

Block No.2:
A piece of my happiness is in debt with the flintstone
You’ve turned to the rocks
But it’s for the flint stone.


Block No.3:
I’m in debt with the flintstone
The whole world is in debt with the flintstone


Block No.4:
It has cast a spell
For all your desires
Behind the railing.

Block No.5:
I’m the mother of this Flintstone
I’ve nourished it
I’ve shed tears on it
If the world is on fire
I’m the one to blame.


Block No.6:
I’ve betrayed the heaven above
God is disabled by it.


Block No.7:
And since then people have taken the vow of silence, …

From 'Dating Noah’s Son'

Rosa Jamali

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN INTO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)”
― Rosa Jamali, Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali

“Hey you, feasting at the table on the shore,with bread on your plate, clothes on your body. Someone from the water beckons you, beating the heavy tide with his exhausted hands...
--translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould”
― Nima Yushij, مجموعه آثار نيما يوشيج، دفتر اول شعر

“Ever since the universe hovered above mankind
No one was needless of knowledge's secrets”
― Rudaki