THE POEM BOOK

CESARE PAVESE, & HASHEM SHAABANI
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solitude, politics and death.

CESARE PAVESE
Passion for Solitude

I'm eating a little supper by the bright window.
The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn.
Outside my door, the quiet roads lead,
after a short walk, to open fields.
I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows
how many women are eating now. My body is calm:
labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.

Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch
the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive,
but not worth these cherries, which I’m eating alone.
I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining
among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them.
A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life
of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.
A small dose of silence suffices, and everything’s still,
in its true place, just like my body is still.

All things become islands before my senses,
which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence.
All things in this darkness—I can know all of them,
just as I know that blood flows in my veins.
The plain is a great flowing of water through plants,
a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone,
lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins
with each living thing that this plain provides.

The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,
it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.

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TPB's notes: found notes: "Cesare Pavese, "Passion for Solitude" from Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950. Copyright © 2002 by Cesare Pavese. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townshend, WA 98368-0271, Source: Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (Copper Canyon Press, 2002)
TRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY BROCK"

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HASHEM SHAABANI
Seven Reasons Why I should Die

For seven days they shouted at me:
You are waging war on Allah!
Saturday, because you are an Arab
Sunday, well, you are from Ahvaz
Monday, remember you are Iranian,
Tuesday: You mock the sacred Revolution.
Wednesday, didn’t you raise your voice for others?
Thursday, you are a poet and a bard.
Friday: You’re a man, isn’t that enough to die?

in the arabic:

من شعره
سبعة أسباب تكفي لأموت
لسبعة أيام وهم يصرخون بي:
أنت تشن حربا على الإله!
في السبت قالوا: لأنك عربي
في الأحد: حسنا، إنك من الأجواز
في الاثنين: تذكر أنك إيراني،
في الثلاثاء: أنت سخرت من الثورة المقدسة.
في الأربعاء: ألم ترفع صوتك على الآخرين؟
في الخميس: أنت شاعر ومغنٍ.
في الجمعة: أنت رجل، ألا يكفي كل هذا لتموت؟

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TPB's notes: Hashem Shaabani, Poet, Iranian, was hanged to death Jan 27th 2014 by the current Iranian Govt for “enmity against God” also known as "threatening national security.” 

Many say of Hashem Shaabani, "Much of his poetry, both in Persian and Arabic, is in fact non-political."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashem_Shabani