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The Cluttered Table

میزِ به هم ریخته

by Garous Abdolmalekian

Translated from Persian by

Idra Novey & Ahmad Nadalizadeh

این میزِ به هم ریخته

جنازه ی یک مهمان یست

من و تو که تنها بودیم

پس این همه ته سیگار بر کفِ اتا قها

این چا یهای سرد

این کاغذهای مچاله

،که در تصادف با عقل مُرده اند

از کجا آمده است؟

تو

سال ها پیش رفته ای

و جسدهای من

در هر کجای این خانه

هر یک به کاری مشغول اند

This cluttered table

is the corpse of the party.

You and I were alone,

so where have all these

cigarette butts on the floor come from,

these cold cups of tea

these crumpled papers,

ruined in a collision with acuity?

You left years ago

and my inert bodies

are occupied with something

in every corner of this house.

_____

From Lean Against This Late Hour by Garous Abdolmalekian, to be published on April 14, 2020 by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2020 by Garous Abdolmalekian. Translation copyright © 2020 by Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh.

Author

Garous Abdolmalekian

Garous Abdolmalekian was born in 1980, days after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, and lives in Tehran. He is the author of five poetry books and the recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize. His poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish. Abdolmalekian is presently the editor of the poetry section at Chesmeh Publications in Tehran and the executive editor of publications at the Youth Poetry Office in Iran.

Translator

Idra Novey

Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. She is the award-winning author of the novels Those Who Knew and Ways to Disappear. Her work has been translated into ten languages and she's translated numerous authors from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently Clarice Lispector. For her poetry and translation she has received awards from the PEN Translation Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Translator

Ahmad Nadalizadeh

Ahmad Nadalizadeh is a translator from the Persian and PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Oregon.