PIW Poem of the Week: Of this Bridge

Mehrdad Fallah comes from Northern Iran. He was born in 1960 in Fashoo Poshteh – "a small village  . . . five fingers away from the Caspian", as he writes in his autobiographical poem 'Let's get some fresh air' – somewhere between Langerood and Lahijan in the province of Gilan. He discovered his love of reading and writing poetry in his teens at high school.

In 1976 Fallah went to study in Tehran, where he became acquainted with the many bookshops of the capital and the contemporary Iranian poetry scene....  What most strikes the eye in considering Fallah's career is his search for new writing and new experiments.... He keeps inviting poets of his generation to innovation and experimentation and believes that the creative poet should not enslave himself to the illusion of appealing to a mass audience through poetry. He thinks of mass audience as a media concept and shares the belief of Jorge Louis Borges, the Argentinian poet, that the poet is someone who is imprisoned in an ivory tower, writing a letter to someone else who is also imprisoned in an ivory tower.

Abol Froushan  

© Image: Mehrdad Fallah

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OF THIS BRIDGE

These bridges are no bridge dear
they bow and
          send us from one solitude
to another

Even as time passes and
         we grow closer
the air too becomes a wall over here
in these wet streets
a broken sobbing
                       seeps down the sewers

and I collapse as I arrive
at the intersection of shadows
and my dishevelled voice
does not reach yours

  

©2011, Mehrdad Fallah ©Translation: 2011, Abol Froushan

Poem of the week

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