To Die Standing Up
A severed head in between your hands
my eyes on the broken clock
And sad and rebellious poems
and the wolf, unafraid of the gun
On my doubts of the origin of existence,
on choking loneliness when drunk
And longing and inhaling you,
and the depth of the tragedy; not seeing you
The artery's destiny is obstruction,
and your crime, a scream against the wind
The end of the story is always a bitter one,
and the poet whose conviction is apostasy
The good God sleeping in my book,
the dried semen on my bed
The good God of wrath, death, and religious decree,
and my cries over Yaghma's poetry
Let me be like a cactus
Stay with me, as reading poetry,
next to you, with covenant with desert,
that our code is to die standing up
Tell them, my story was a tale of blood,
contempt, born out of insanity
Tell them, how I did not give in
Tell them, how I died standing up
Translated by MPD © 2012
Translator : I see Shahin Najafi’s latest song as a universal message of standing up for one's rights and willingness to pay for those rights with his own life, taking a stand against tyranny; and as such, I have tried to translate his poem with a universal appeal, so I have foregone using words such as ‘hadith’ and ‘fatwa.’ used in the poem. There is also a reference to "Yaghma," who is Yaghma Golrouee, a contemporary Iranian poet.