Knotweed Poem by Rosa Jamali

Knotweed
A Poem by Rosa Jamali
Translated from original Persian into English by the Author

I've turned to an annual plant, shielded and armed
From the genus of hollyhocks and broad leaves
Whole five-thousand-year history is reversing in my mind
It was the moment that you were buried with no shroud
And I'm the weeds and icicles of this land, …

I'd been climbing over the flames,
It was a black ladder,
Burnt my sole feet
The moment I had chopped my heart,
You had sucked my blood in that woundless bowl
Then I was growing like a wildflower,
Living for millions of years

In Syriac over my body:
Nail-shaped herbs had written some letters
I'm the genus of thorns
With wounded heels of thousands of miles travelling in the oasis
My blistered sour feet
And my parched parted lips
Defeated by the mountain ranges
Where I'd been fighting with my claws

My roots are extending into the fluent liquid of vessels
Lilacs had grown over my arms
And I converted into the growing ivy
After the flaming fire where I was burnt.

I left my name on the land I stepped, …

And who's this weeping human child, lamenting two thousand years in my arms? Still weeping? ! Always weeping? !

I've been raising this child for six thousand years
And grown this Persian Hero to send him to the battlefield
Breastfed him
And he has grown out of my eyes
This extreme light which has blinded me…