Translated by Gary Gach and Erfan Mojib
The leaves always fall towards the wind's departure I close my eyes as you hide As I seek you you see me Weeping isn't a matter of tears That's just skipping a stone on the surface of a river I know when it’s mealtime I know what time the janitor comes I don’t know only when you’ll arrive Growing near you gather speed yet it's my heart that races breathless You set me on fire then jumped back so as not to get scorched
Alireza Roshan, author
Alireza Roshan, born 1977, Tehran, worked as a journalist, heading the Books desk at Iran’s most popular reformist daily newspaper, Shargh. He gained fame as “a poet without a book” by publishing his brief poems daily on the Internet, attracting a following of thousands of readers. In Tehran, a selection was published as The Book of Absence. In 2011, a selection was published in France as Jusqu’à toi combien de poèmes. Besides The Book of Absence, he’s author of Busy, Cage Poetry, Fade, Leyli’s Shadow, A Little Book of Love Poetry, Moonstone, The Point & Other Stories, Suwayda, and We. He currently lives and works in Hamburg.
Erfan Mojib, translator
Erfan Mojib holds an MFA, Creative Writing, UNB, Canada; and an MA, English Literature, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. His publications include a number of translated works to/from English including Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes; Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy; A Farewell to Gabo & Mercedes by Rodrigo García; The Spell Chanted by Lambs, and The Illusion of Separateness, by Reza Ghasemi; García Márquez: The Man and His Work by Gene Bell-Villada; and The Passion byJeanette Winterson. His children’s books, in collaboration with the Russian artist Oksana Baturina, have been translated into Persian, Russian, and Chinese. He is the recipient of a Tehran School of Art Short Story Award and the David Walker Prize for creative writing. In 2023, Hampton Roads will publish Hafiz’ Little Book of Life. For more information: ErfanMojib.com
Gary Gach, translator
Gary Gach holds a BA in English from UCLA–SFSU. With Brother Anthony of Taizé and Young-moo Kim, he’s translated three books of poetry from Korean by Ko Un: Flowers of a Moment, BOA Editions (Northern California Book Award for Translation; Lannan Translations Selection); Ten Thousand Lives (introduction, Robert Hass), and Songs for Tomorrow, both from Green Integer. His anthology What Book!? – Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop, Parallax Press, received an American Book Award from Before Columbus Foundation. His translations have been published in over a dozen anthologies and +150 magazines, including Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, Book of Luminous Things, Brick, City Lights Review, Code of Signals, Drunken Boat, Evergreen Review, Exiled in the Word, Language for a New Century, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poems for the Millennium (1&5), Technicians of the Sacred, Two Lines, and Zyzzyva. For more information: GaryGach.com