For my mother

A woman silently wept from dusk to dawn.
She moaned from dusk to dawn
wishing me to rise and become a light
to hang on the people’s porch.

A woman moaned from dusk to dawn, but alas,
her silent sobbing didn’t rouse me—
the flame of the people’s silent fort
set my night ablaze and burned by dawn.

The flame of the silent, sunken fort,
its corridors and gates reduced to cinders—yes
the flame of the silent fort,
not the woman’s night-weeping until dawn.

(Translated from the Persian by Niloufar Talebi)