The title is a lie;
I can’t read Farsi.
ما هر چه را که باید از دست داده باشیم از دست داده ایم
I can make out:
“we lose,
we lose.”
I type it into a translation app:
“we have lost everything we need to lose.”
In between what I read and what is written:
“need,” “everything.”
*
Here, the waving flag.
Here, the other world.
Because we need mail, people die.
*
Because we need groceries, people die.
I write “we need”
knowing we dilutes
*
my responsibility,
like watercolors dipped
in a fast river.
Get behind me, English.
*
When I text
ما هر چه را که باید از دست داده باشیم از دست داده ایم
to my dad he writes back,
“we have lost whatever we had to lose.”
Hammering
pentameter.
Whatever we
had.
People die because they look like him.
My uncle jailed, his daughter killed.
*
This a real fact too wretched for
letters. And yet:
My uncle jailed.
*
His daughter killed.
Waving world,
the other flag—
there is room in the language for being
without language.
*
So much of wet is cold.
So much of diamond is light.
*
I want both my countries
to be right
to fear me.
We have lost
whatever
we had to lose.
__________________________________
From Pilgrim Bell: Poems by Kaveh Akbar. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press. Copyright © 2020 by Kaveh Akbar.
