The Fern
A Poem by Rosa Jamali
Translated from original Persian to English by the Author

I was a seven-storey being, covered in scarce species of a plant
And it was a funeral ceremony
and I was the only single mourner
First I grabbed a gemstone from this very soil,
And then sealed and knocked it over my forehead
I returned and had a glance at my homeland again and I wept.
My father was the phoenix ; My mother a restless Goddess in Shusha and Hegmataneh and on the tomb of Mordechai
But God was with me
My far-sighted binocular eyes are a camera in this deep darkness, a whole dark loophole!
And I’m the dumb and voiceless Myth of clashes of spoons and forks at the dinner table
Deity of The Nawab Highway , heading the cemeteries
At East End of this city ... What’s pouring over your head blow by blow and nonstop, incessantly?
What is this entire dirt and filth in thorns and dust?
Which is covering things in a very slow pace, gentle and soft!
What's it like? What could it be?
The fairies had nested on my dark hair,
And I had washed the fairies, drained them, brewed them like rice.
You knew the time well , the moments are lingering, it's yawning and sleepy,
That very frozen moment and then absolute silence
While with my wounded nails on the stove, I was boiling over the saucepan!
When I covered the whole scene of the Revolution Square and erupted like a volcano
Perhaps I had just kept my face pale with bleaching …

I am the Fern
The Orphan Land
The Stepchild
Fostered Land
Burned,
And forbidden
And infected with all kinds of diseases, fake gurus, lies and manipulations

What has captured your heart and attached you to this land, brother?
The country which has been completely burned, half buried and the other half contaminated with Lead,
The smokes are left...

The Fern I am!
The Goddess of growing wild flowers,
The Lady of thorn and thistles
Upon the sorrow of the Talisman woven into my country,
And how I dug the mountains,
What have you done then?
Only a handful of soil which has been displaced
Makes me bewitched forever
Ashes which have been sprinkled over Bozorgmehr and Yazdgerd and the Great Republic
My ashes which have been spread over the seas and over the far oceans
And I have been resided in the waters of the River Tigris forever
The stale smell of dampness;
The spider which has nested right over my head
And you had foretold all this ,
You had already seen it...

The Naming ritual is over.
Turn off the lights. Tomorrow is a Saturday,
Oh, I will not sigh!
Mirrors have grown over my index finger!
For I have wept the waters of seven seas in six thousand years
And I have taken refuge in the corner of a chair in fury

The sidewalks are deserted.
Passers-by are the perpetual dead
And this deserted Military Zone
Has no longer been residential.

I yielded to the winds
And packed
Giving away my body
And giving my soul to the windshields
It came to pass in a second when I became a yardbird
A captive for thousands of years
To the bitter end,
My words were ashes and carbon dioxide; coal...

The Fern is an ill-bred wild seed, off the rails that is not given a name, not called by a name
It's exactly like a lettuce leaf: not happened to be named,
But it's peeled,
Misshaped, warped and deformed
Why should it be named in the first place?