Poems of Hamid Reza Akbari (Iran)

Hamid Reza Akbari (Shorveh)

Poet, writer, and literary critic

Born in 1970 (1349 AH) in Ahmadabad, Abadan

Winner of several literary awards

Author of 43 books in the fields of poetry, fiction, criticism, and anthropology

Editor-in-chief of the electronic journal Lirav for Persian speakers worldwide

Founder of the Lirav International Literary Prize for Music

Founder of Lirav Persian Speakers Radio

Poetry section manager of the  «Friendship of people» magazine of Tajikistan

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1

For Ostad Hasan Dadkhah

You have become my dreams

I burn from your absence!

Do you see

I circle around you

I dance!

Would it be good if I were all finished now?!

You don’t know!

The world is also in debt

I was the shepherd

You were me

And poetry is a bond between our two lips!

March 2025 (Esfand 1404)

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2

I am worried that sleep

has taken me away

and the wind too

with its wide-open mouth — everything, even

the birds

and the trees —

it seems fish have a story of being and not-being

dreams have a sea

and nights have silence

We are seen

carrying our own gallows

and the moon upon our shoulders!

But the sky is not in its place.

March 2025 (Esfand 1404)

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3

I have given birth to this poem

pain has pain

and is killing me

right at my fifty-sixth year

again the poem chews me

like a pair that has a vein

Here

I am found

What is this?!

This thing that claws at my body

has a whistle in my head, it smokes

My fingers long for you in such a way

that you should calculate:

I equal you

and it is almost

that on these lines of poetry I faint

Now, in this hospital where I was born

I celebrate your childhood

I

am your entire childhood /

I have become!

March 2025 (Esfand 1404)

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4

The tribe

is the white sound of riders

with girls

whose name forever

is Bibi Maryam —

who are written

even upon all the winds.

We run across all of Zagros!

Now the night too, with the tribe’s chandelier,

has no quarrel until dawn.

And the mark of mourning

remains forever

on the forehead of time.

March 2025 (Esfand 1404)

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5

One

If grass grows

from my bone

at cockcrow,

and a dog

with its puppy

barking

comes to my grave,

and an elegy takes place —

a shadow is still

imprinted upon my resurrection.

We have become delirious now,

and from salvation

only “I love you” remains!

Two

Whether you show tolerance

or not!

Ah,

it has become my shroud —

in these long queues of poverty!

Three

Be my Qais!

Do not drive me out of the sleep of existence!

Until the trance —

so that I may rise

with the circle of the moon!

Four

Watch!

This rak’at has fallen

in your name —

for the love of this bronze dagger,

for the sigh!

Five

Judas tree (Arghavan)

did not give me a cup!

I lift my heart

so that the sigh

may rise into takbir

in the name of a miracle!

Hamid Reza Akbari Shorveh

May–June 2026 (Khordad 1405)

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6

Hey Shout

Here

war has become so easy

Siavashes pass through fire

Now

the mouth

has remained open for red songs

But the soul

takes from the soul of the world

Look!

You, my dear,

have become mother homeland

You dance

upon the height of all this fire

and the streets are always lit

The children of “Shokufeh” (Blossom)

review this

in their dreams

Hamid Reza Akbari Shorveh

April 2026 (Farvardin 1405)