Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree:
our emotions resemble leaves and alive
to their shapes we are nourished.

Have you felt the expanse and contours of grief
along the edges of a big Norway maple?
Have you winced at the orange flare

searing the curves of a curling dogwood?
I have seen from the air logged islands,
each with a network of branching gravel roads,

and felt a moment of pure anger, aspen gold.
I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field,
a single white whooping crane in the flock.

And I have traveled along the contours
of leaves that have no name. Here
where the air is wet and the light is cool,

I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
I am living at the edge of a new leaf.

^{translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach}

The foot
that brought me to You
now
in a bread line
plays with a pebble

*

Missing someone
is a mother
who leaves the front door ajar

*

I want to open a door
onto a sea & a night
I want to open a door
onto you
who are the sea & the night

*

As the seasons change
the plums
are replaced by persimmons
longing
by
longing

*

He told Adam
“Your fall is temporary
You’ll come back to me”
but Adam built a house
and called it home

*

I’d wanted to be the wind
in my beloved’s hair
but am only a breeze
amidst gnarly shrubs

*

Between me and you
I am a wall
Take me down

«علیرضا روشن از «کتاب نیست

پا

که مرا پیش یار میتوانست برد
اینک
در صف نان
با تکه ریگی بازیبازی میکند

*

دلتنگی
مادریست
که در را
پیش میگذارد

*

کاش دری بگشایم
به دریایی و شبی
کاش دری بگشایم
به روی تو
که دریایی و شبی

*

فصل عوض میشود
جای آلو را
خرمالو میگیرد
جای دلتنگی را
دلتنگی

*
آدم را گفت
هبوط ِ تو موقت است
به من باز میگردی
آدم اما
خانه ساخت

*

باد میخواستم باشم
در مویِ یار
بادم اینک
البهالی ِ خار

*

بین ما
من دیوارم
خرابم کن