Poems by Basir Ahang
Poems by Basir Ahang
Basir Ahang was born in 1984 in Ghazni, Afghanistan. He is a Hazara poet, journalist and human rights activist from Afghanistan. Basir graduated with a degree in Persian Literature from Kabul University in 2007. After receiving threats by Taliban for his activities in Afghanistan, Basir Ahang moved to Italy In 2008 where he continued his university studies in International Relations in Padua University. He has published Sarzamine Badamhaye Talkh an anthology of his poems in Persian. In 2014 one of his poems won the Special Jury Award at the International Poetry Festival of Sassari (Italy). His poems have been translated in Italian and English. In 2015 his poems will be published in Italian by Gilgamesh Publishing Company. Basir Ahang is also a member of IFJ (International Federation of Journalists) since January 2009. He wrote many reports and made a documentary about the refugees and asylum seekers in Europe and particularly in Greece. A part of this documentary was broadcast on Rai 1 Italys public television. Ahang has so far, written hundreds of reports on refugees and their legal rights, women rights, freedom of speech and human rights violation in Afghanistan. His articles are written in Persian, Italian and English which are published in different online and printing media such as Kabul Press, BBC Persian, Radio Zamaneh, Deutsche Welle and Hazara People International Network.
Translated by Rebecca Lily Bowen
Bogotá
To the Colombian people who have suffered for more than half a century
Bogotá!
Live long your rainbow
And ‘Providencia’, the jewel in your crown
You, the golden, red and blue land
Will echo in the song
‘La Sonora Dinamita’ will play on
With the Cumbia dance
And its steely-chain sound
Bearing on the ankles of slaves
A message of freedom
Smile!
Now is the time to stand again
It’s more than half a century
That beyond these dark clouds
A reckless cobalt sky has breathed
For half a century
‘Providencia’ the paradise
Has waited for your spark
To break at last the broken cycle
And bring hope to its green coast
Gabo will write of no more love in the time of cholera
And your children of tomorrow
Will take each other’s hands
To dance the Cumbia and the Vallenato
Stand up!
Bolivar is waiting for ‘Totó la Momposina’
To begin murmuring a song
Heedless of the tobacco taste still bitter in his mouth
This Moment is Mine
This moment is mine
Because of the journey, the discomfort
And all that was but is no more
My footprints trace borders innumerable
From Kabul to Rome,
From Tamerlane to Julius Caesar
Passing through lands stained by Gobineau
This moment is mine
And I give it to my mother
Who embroidered her life’s desires
On scraps of cotton
Only so that my father
Could blow his nose
To my sisters isolated from the world
And to my brothers
Who instead of books
Without meaning to
Picked up guns
This moment is mine
And I will give it to the tears and the screams
Until the reflections, the echos
Wake the deaf, restore sight to the blind
Of my city
This moment is mine no more
It’s time to go
My turn has come to tell of the wandering waters
Of the Mediterranean
So that my footprints would become uneresable
Wandering Exile
Wandering exile
Despondent but brave
With a suitcase of war tales and woe
Perhaps the flight from death
The sense of abandonment
Dragged me to exile in this foreign city
The soles of my shoes are the whole of my land
Since in a world so wide
I have been given no place to call my own
I write on the walls of the night “be a refuge for humanity”
Like a nudge to quieten the city
My only motivation
My bedtime stories on the coloured walls of the city
That thin the smoke and the disappointment
My language is unknown to all
Even to my nearest neighbour
Who everyday ignores my good morning with an angry scowl
But I still live in hope
I am exiled
And a hundred miles away my whole existence and my memories
Are tied to a patch of land
Which now plays crossroads to blood and terror
But I will still live in hope
Perhaps one day this knot will come undone
And the next generation in this city
Once they’ve read our stories
Will be guests no longer but hosts in their own homes
And maybe my fate
Will curse only their fathers
This is my story
I am a wandering exile
And my homeland is no more
Than the soles of my shoes
Website Basir Ahang http://www.basirahang.com/
Interview By Angelo Boccato
News http://lanuovasardegna.gelocal.it/ -Italian-
Articulos de Basir Ahang http://frontierenews.it/ -Italian-
Facebook de Basir Ahang
Google+ de Basir Ahang
Twitter de Basir Ahang
Published at Febraury 17th de 2015
