Geoffrey Squires
Geoffrey Squires (b.1942) is an Irish poet and translator. He grew up in Co. Donegal and has a first degree from Cambridge and a doctorate from Edinburgh universities. He published a selection of 19 modern Persian poems in Poésie Vivante (Geneva) in 1968, on his return from three years in Iran where he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Letters, Isfahan. More recently Miami University Press (Ohio) brought out his translations of Hafez (2014) and Rumi (2020) the first of which won the Lois Roth Persian translation prize. His own poetry has been published extensively in Ireland and the UK and six of his books have appeared in bilingual English-French editions from Editions Unes, Nice. He has given readings in a number of countries and was a writer in residence in Béthune in northern France in 1916. His book of translations of early Irish poetry, My News for You, was published by Shearsman Press, Bristol, in 2015 and is held in the reading room of the National Library in Dublin.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS x
FOREWORD xi
M. R. Ghanoonparvar
PREFACE xiii
POEMS
Nima Yushij 2
The Cold Hearth
Makhulla
Night
Memory
My Home is Cloudy
O Men
The Moonlight Seeps
Ri ra
A Familiar Story
Night all night
Akhavan Saless 18
My Garden
Windows
Like a Thirsty Pitcher
Lament
Graftings and the Garden
Winter
The Moment of Meeting
Green
Prayer
Shamlou 34
Nocturne
Nothing to Say
Song for Acquaintance
Midnight
The Death of the Nazarene
Poverty
On the Paving-Stones
Dark Song
Execution Hour
Sketch
In this Dead End
Atashi 52
Mountain Ghazal
Perhaps
One Day
Vision at Dawn
We Didn’t Know
Naderpour 60
Unspoken
A Kind of Storm
Rome
Behind the Fire
Grape Poem
Square
Qom
The Shortest Distance between Two Points
Under Western Skies
Kasrai 74
Arash the Archer (prologue)
(Untitled)
Echo
Drawing
Domestication
Ebtehaj 84
Sterile
Night-bound
Sentiment
What a Blessing is this Sorrow
Arghavan
The Sorrow of the Mirror
Farrokhzad 96
My Lover
Couple
Daybreak
The Wind-up Doll
In the Cold Streets of the Night
Friday
Journey Poem
The Wind will take us Away
Another Birth
My Heart is Sore
Rahmani 118
New Town
He Looked Once
The Image Trembled
Exile in the Link of the Chain
Roya’I 126
Seasong 3
Seasong 4
Seasong 9
Seasong 14
Seasong 29
Hoqouqi 132
A Shadow on the Wall
Dust at the Foot of the Water-mill
And it is this that I know
Poem
Ahmad Reza Ahmadi 142
With Wide Eyes
The Latest News
O Dark Mankind
Pleasure Ground
Story
Identity Card
News
Rain on a Friday Morning
Noori’ala 154
A Memory for the New Generation
Sky and River
Narrative
Our Name is Love
A Poem is Something Private
Azad 162
I am a Plant
How do I Praise
Abadan
Evening
A Long Blue Season
Without you I am Dust
It is not only Men who Cry
Jalali 172
Five Untitled Poems
Sepanlou 178
Happy Day
O Long-suffering World (from Pavements/Sidewalks)
Caravanserai
A Letter with Bad News
Autumn Arrives
I Take the Pulse of my Country
Sepehri 190
In Golestaneh
Light I Flower Water
The Trembling Word Existence
An Oasis in the Moment
Sketch
Water
NOTES 199
ADDENDA 219
SOME OPENING LINES 222
BIBLIOGRAPHY 233
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 235