We

translated from the Persian by Sholeh Wolpé

We fell in love in the heart of war
between two campaigns
between two bombings.
One of us a “Salah al-Din” soldier,
the other a “Crusader.”

We arrived at one another
the way one returns to the earth.
We wove into each other
they way fibers of fabric embrace.

Birds belong to the blue,
gazelles to the plain,
leopards to the mountain,
and I to you.
But tell me, is there room
in bullets for kissing?

We fell in love in the heart of war
between two half-glances
              between two frowns
                        between two commands to shoot.

Bury us on the border              between two countries.

Leaving Alone

translated from the Persian by Sholeh Wolpé

Death can snuff out your eyes
but never your gaze.
It can shrivel your lips
but not your smile.
It can still your hands
but never the soul of your untamed fingers.

What wonders she used to paint:
a sky for the birds, a mother for Muhammad,
a homeland for Ismail, and for Zahereh
a heart that would tick like a clock.

But tell me, whose shoulder
am I to wet with these tears?
Whose hand would clasp
this pain in my heart?
Which voice would sing to me
“Come back, it is not safe to go alone.”

I wish you had also sketched a road
from Earth to a place
that is not Earth.

You are still here worrying
about leaves and the fish.
You have hidden inside the night
and your fingers’ wild spirit
saunters through my veins.

Death can snuff out your eyes,
but never your gaze.

Hope

translated from the Persian by Sholeh Wolpé

Hope visits our home, sometimes.
We wake up to the sound of its laughter,
sit in a circle around it and drink green tea.

It strokes our heads tenderly,
consoles us about father’s death,
mother’s tuberculosis,
the chill on the other side of the door.
It lulls us like a soothing song,

but when it’s time to leave,
it walks away anxiously on weary legs,
labors to breathe as it hauls away our pain.

It always stops at the threshold,
says, “Hope to see you again.”

Hope visits our home,
              but only sometimes.

Read “The Spiral of Memory: A Conversation with Elyas Alavi & Sholeh Wolpé”

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Elyas Alavi is a poet, curator, and visual artist with a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, moving image, poetry, and performance. His practice often examines the complex intersections of race, displacement, gender, religion, and sexuality accounting for hyper-invisibilities and troubling received notions of culture and belonging. He has received commissions from Australian SME galleries, ARIs, and biennales including Sydney Biennale, ACE, Hyphenated Biennale, TarraWarra Biennale, Griffith University, Granville Arts Centre, Next Wave, Nexus, POP, and UTS. Alavi has also published three critically acclaimed poetry books. Translations of his poems have appeared in publications such as World Literature Today and PARSE Journal. He is the co-founder of Gholghola Collective and a member of the Eleven Collective. Alavi graduated with a Master of Visual Arts from the University of South Australia in 2016 and in 2020 completed a Master of Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Arts, University of London.

Sholeh Wolpé is a poet, writer, and librettist. She was born in Iran, writes in English, translates from Persian, and lives in Los Angeles and Barcelona. Her published work includes seven collections of poetry, several plays, five books of translations, and three anthologies, as well as texts and librettos for the choir and opera. Presently, she is the Writer-In-Residence at the University of California, Irvine. Her translations include The Invisible Sun (HarperCollins, 2025), selected by S&P as one the most Spiritual Books of 2025 and longlisted for the 2026 PEN Translation Prize, and The Conference of the Birds (W. W. Norton, 2017), both by the twelfth-century Iranian Sufi mystic poet Attar; and Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (recipient of Lois Roth Translation Award) by the twentieth-century Iranian rebel poet. Wolpé’s recent poetry collections include Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), and her latest work of prose, “Eye for an Eye,” appears in Iran +100: Stories from a Century After the Coup (Comma Press, UK, 2025). She is the recipient of the Opera America Discovery Award, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, Midwest Book Award, and the Lois Roth Translation Prize.

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These poems are published as part of the fifteenth installment of our “Literature & Democracy” series, which was curated by NER international correspondent Ellen Hinsey. This quarterly column presents writers’ responses to the threats to democracy around the world.

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