Nimā Yushij (November 12, 1895 – January 6, 1960) also called Nimā, born Ali Esfandiāri, was a contemporary Tabarian and Persian poet who started the she’r-e now “new poetry”) also known as she’r-e nimaa’i (“Nimaic poetry”) trend in Iran.
Yooshij is considered the father of modern Persian poetry.
IT IS NIGHT
Nima Yooshij
A night of deep darkness.
On a branch of the old fig tree
A frog croaks without cease,
Predicting a storm, a deluge,
and I am drowned in fear.
It is night,
And with night the world seems
like a corpse in the grave;
And in fear I say to myself:
‘What if torrential rain falls everywhere?’
‘What if the rain does not stop
until the earth sinks into the water
like a small boat?’
In this night of awful darkness
Who can say in what state we will be
when dawn breaks?
Will the morning light make
the frightening face of the storm
disappear?
==========
IN THE COLD WINTER NIGHT
Nima Yooshij
In the cold winter night
The furnace of the sun too
Burns not like the hot hearth of my lamp,
And no lamp is luminous as mine
Neither it freezes by the cold moon that shines above.
I lit my lamp when my neighbor was walking in a dark night,
And it was a cold winter night,
The wind encircled the pine,
Amid silent heaps
She was lost from me, separated from this narrow lane,
And still the story is remembered,
And on my lips these words lingered:
‘Who lights? Who burns?
Who saves this tale of the heart?’
In the cold winter night
The furnace of the sun too
Burns not like the hot hearth of my lamp,
And no lamp is luminous as mine
Neither it freezes by the cold moon that shines above.