Translated from the Persian by Bänoo Zan
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1.
Disinviting Nowruz
By Khalilullah Khalili
Tell Nowruz not to come this year
not to find its way to the country of bloody shrouds
Tell the nightingale not to sing of joy
Smiling lips don’t befit the grief-stricken
Blood blooms from the graves of homeland martyrs, woe!
Woe is the homeland! Woe!
For rose-coloured shrouds be it spring or winter
For bloody hearts be it desert or rose garden
In a country on fire, in a ruined home
There is no one to kiss the orphan’s cheeks
There is no one to sew shrouds for the dead, woe!
Woe is the homeland! Woe!
Blood blooms from the heart of your rocks today
Insobriety and insanity bloom from your soil today
What has the tulip seen that it blooms downwards today?
Why is that meadow growing yellow today?
Hands and feet, jasmine and cypress are red with blood, woe!
Woe is the homeland! Woe!
2.
Home
By Somaia Ramish
My childhood was lost in Tehran
My childhood lived as an Afghan refugee
My youth was lost in Herat
when this fresh body smelled foreign
Two homes
Two sorrows
Two houses of sorrow
My middle age is a mourning Herat weeping for Tehran
If there is a chance this time
when I return home
I will lose the dark light of connection
buy a mirror not chained to any walls
will celebrate
emergence/apparency
freedom
life
as much as Khorasan
About the poets:
Khalilullah Khalili (1907–1987) was a poet, professor, historian, diplomat, and royal confidant born in Afghanistan. Among the positions he held were the Minister of Culture and Information and Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Following the April 1978 Communist coup, Khalili sought asylum first in West Germany and then in the United States where he wrote much of his most powerful poetry about the war in his native land. He then moved to Islamabad, Pakistan, where he died. His remains were moved to Afghanistan in 2016.
Somaia Ramish is a prolific poet, writer, and human rights activist from Afghanistan. She has published several books of poetry. Her poems have been translated into English, French, Japanese, Russian, Hindi, Nepali, Spanish and Italian. After the Taliban banned art in Afghanistan, she created the Baamdaad House of Poetry in Exile to work against censorship and suppression.
About the translator:
Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, and curator, with numerous published pieces and books including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry open mic series (inception 2012). It bridges the gap between poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo, with Cy Strom, is the co-editor of the anthology: Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. She is the recipient of the 2025 Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award.
