The Fetus of the Dream
Dream fetuses.
And in the fetus dream,
like a growing amplified silence—
like ivy around nothing:
I dreamed last night.
I dreamed of wet ivy—
wet like water
and rapidly growing—
water that smells like old wine
in the deepest treasure beneath the earth,
where the spider danced the figure of its intelligence in the air.
I don’t know if I’m drunk or crazy.
In my head, he calls perpetually:
“Oh no, son!
We haven’t reached the garden.
We sank in shit.”
My wounded soul talks like this.
You don’t know what my unwounded soul would say.
This soul rises on the farthest bank of the sky
in the early evening.
Now that I write this,
it is sunset.
On the white expanse of the page
the lines dissolve in grey.
On the flying shadow of my hand
the sun descends.
I will dream—
dream of wet ivy everywhere.
The Fetus of the Text
Breathing on the window
between a frozen without and a hot within.
The glass does not permit light to pass with this breath
It colors with this breath.
Have you seen white days? The sun no longer gives light. It splashes white.
Just as white,
the window turns into a page for writing a name
for writing with fingertips on this fire within.
You have written something between without and within.
On the unseen glass a name is seen.
You have written something that can be read from without and within.
From without it reads backwards.
What happens when reading a text written on breath?
Little by little, breaths go away and take your text.
Ambiguity goes away and the text is lost in lucidity.
The Fetus of the Marginalia
I will inscribe marginalia
with my body
onto yours.
—
جنین خواب
خوا ْب جنی ْن میدید
و در جنی ْن خوا ْب ھمچون
سکو ِن مشّدِد رویایی بود ھمچون
: پیچکی دو ِر ھیچ
خوا ْب دیشب دیدم –
خوا ِب یک پیچ ِک خیس تر
مثِل آب
و بسیار رویان
کھ بوی شراب کھنھ میداد
در دنجترین گنجِ زیرِ زمین
.آنجا که عنکبوت در هوا نقشِ نبوغِ خویش را رقصیده بود
نمیدانم
سرم به سنگ خورده یا مستم
: که در سرم یکی مدام صدا میزند
، وای ! نه ! پسرم »
ما به باغ نرسیدیم
« … ما به گه فرو رفتیم
و حالا که این را نوشتم
غروب بود و
خطوط در خاکستری تار میشدند
و بر پهنهی سفید کاغذ
و سایهی پرندهی دستم
شب میشد
و من خواب خواهم دید
. خوابِ یک پیچکِ خیسِ درهمهجایی
جنين متن
ها و ها كردنهايِ رويِ شيشهها
ميانِ درونِ گر گرفته و بيرونِ يخزده
شيشه ديگر گذرگاهِ نور نيست با اين ها
با اين ها رنگ ميگيرد
روز هاي سفيد را ديدهاي ، انگار آفتاب نور نميدهد ديگر ، سفيد ميپاشد
همان قدر سفيد –
صفحهاي ميشود براي نوشتنِ اسمي
با نوكِ انگشت
: بر اين ها، آتشِ درون، نوشتن
.تو در ميانِ درون و بيرون نوشتهاي
شيشه، چون نامرئي است، ميشود جايي كه نامي را روي نامرئي مرئي كني
.و نامرئي ها هميشه با جاودان ها همپايهاند
چيزي نوشتهاي که هم از درون خواندنیست و هم از بيرون
.ولی از بيرون برعكس خوانده ميشود
، در خواندنِ متن نوشته شده روي ها چه اتّفاقي ميافتد . ها كمكم ميرود
.متنِ تو را با خود ميبرد. ابهام ميرود، متن گم ميشود در وضوح
جنین حاشیھ
با تنم
بر تنت
چھ حاشیھھا کھ نخواھم نوشت
—
Kayvan Tahmasebian, born in 1979, Isfahan, is an Iranian poet, translator, and literary critic. He is the author of Isfahan’s Mold (Sadeqia dar Bayat Esfahan, 2016), on the fiction of the short story writer Bahram Sadeqi, and a forthcoming volume on the poet Bijan Elahi. His translations include Giorgio Agamben’s Pilate and Jesus (Tehran, 2016) and The Idea of Prose (forthcoming). Tahmasebian has also translated Samuel Beckett, Arthur Rimbaud, T. S. Eliot, Francis Ponge, and Stephan Mallarme for various Iranian literary magazines.
Rebecca Gould is a writer, critic, and scholar of the literatures of the Caucasus. She is the author of Writers and Rebels (Yale University Press, 2016), and the translator of Prose of the Mountains (Central European University Press, 2015), and After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2015). Her translations have appeared in Nimrod, The Hudson Review, and Guernica.