It is an honor to share this excerpt from the forthcoming collection Elegies of the Earth: Selected Poems by Ahmad Shamlou (World Poetry, Nov.11, 2025) accompanied by a moving translator’s note. Make sure to check out this excellent edition in November. Also, we’re happy to feature the accomplished translator Niloufar Talebi in yet another spotlight on women translators during #TranslationMonth.
—Dana Serea, Translation Editor
Known for his political engagement and deep humanism, and his pivotal role in Persian poetry’s modernist turn toward free verse, Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000) crafted poems that carried both lyrical intimacy and cultural force. A central, defiant voice in Iran’s modern literary history, Shamlou championed the power of poetry as an instrument of liberation. His work, long suppressed in his homeland, remains urgent for readers everywhere confronting censorship, exile, and erasure. This bilingual edition honors Shamlou’s centennial with the most expansive selection of his poetry to date in English, encompassing his wide thematic range: from fierce protest to intimate love, mythic storytelling to existential reflection. Niloufar Talebi’s vibrant translations and deeply researched commentary shine new light on Shamlou’s legacy and his relevance today.
Being If life must be lived this lowly how shameful of me not to hang the lamp of my life high on the dry pine of a dead-end road. If life must be lived this purely how impure of me not to leave an eternal mark of my faith, like a mountain, on the fleeting face of the earth. 1953 From Fresh Air (1957)
Nocturnal (No, I Haven’t Carved You) No I haven’t carved you out of my longings— older than stone, finer than a new blade of grass. I haven’t forged you out of my rage— reason unable to rise, flames bursting in the furnace of unrest. I haven’t measured you by the weight of my sorrow— a blade of straw on the scale of loss, a mountain as a measure of futility. □ I’ve chosen you despite the injustice. You said I love you and the norms changed. Do not relent, O force that commands, “Be,” and it becomes! Repeat yourself, again and again! August 8, 1980 From Little Songs of Exile (1980) This poem was first published in Self-Portrait in Bloom (2019)
I…Death Now the heavy tide of time courses through me. Now the heavy tide of time courses through me like a river of iron. Now the heavy tide of time courses through me like a sea of steel and stone. □ I sang a new song, crossing the breeze I sang a new song, crossing the rain I sang a new song, crossing the shadow. In you, water lily and rain, In me, dagger and scream In you, fountain and dream, In me, swamp and shadow. I sang a new song, crossing your path. □ I turned a leaf into a song greener than the grove I turned a wave into a song livelier than people I turned love into a song louder than death Greener than the forest— I turned a leaf into a song Beating harder than the sea’s heart— I turned a wave into a song Louder than life, I turned death into a song. December 1961 From Instants and Eternity (1964)
Funeral Address The unknowing are alike Only the tempest breeds peerless children. Those alike are shadow-like, cautious on the fringes of sunlight, dead in the guise of the living. And these, they are the throwers of caution to the wind, guardians of fires, the living shoulder to shoulder with death, marching ahead of death, forever alive after death, and forever by the name with which they lived, for ruin passes under their towering vision downcast and shamefaced. Discoverers of the fountainhead, humble discoverers of hemlock, seekers of joy in the volcanos’ path, magicians of smiles in nightcaps of pain, with footprints deeper than joy in the flyways of birds. □ They brace thunder, enlighten the house and die. May 15, 1975 From Dagger in the Tray (1977) This poem was first published in Self-Portrait in Bloom (2019)
Translator’s Note:
Engaging with Ahmad Shamlou has been a labor of love and endurance for over a decade. I first knew him not through the page, but as a towering presence in my parents’ underground literary salons in post-revolution Tehran. That kind of proximity to genius leaves a mark. Shamlou became not just a cultural icon in Iran, but a pivotal shadow in my own psyche. Magnetic, defiant, and uncompromising.
I took on his vast and weighty legacy the way I approach all my projects: with curiosity and a desire to understand what feels just out of reach. And this engagement became more than literary translation. I have staged an opera inspired by his work, published Self-Portrait in Bloom, a hybrid memoir and literary portrait of Shamlou, delivered a TEDx talk, created a short film from one of his poems, and woven details from his cinematic life story into multiple projects over the years. Elegies of the Earth, a sweeping, bilingual collection of 80 poems, feels like the closing of a long arc, timed to honor his centennial.
The final stages of this years-long process nearly broke me. Bringing his voice into English—cleanly, freshly, without flattening his legacy—felt like calcination. Painful, purifying. I was held through it by a small group of trusted collaborators, what I call my “Jedi council.” Together, we burned down the excess until both the translations and I were free.
Shamlou married social consciousness with aesthetic revolution, a rare and urgent fusion. With Elegies, his voice now lives in English not as a shadow, but as a presence.
—Niloufar Talebi
About the author and translator
Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000) was one of Iran’s most influential cultural figures. A poet, translator, editor, and journalist, he authored over seventy books, including eighteen volumes of poetry, essays, translations, and an ongoing encyclopedia of folklore. Known also by his pen name, Alef Bamdad (“Dawn”), Shamlou became the leading voice of Iran’s modernist vanguard alongside figures like Forough Farrokhzad. Through bold innovations in language, form, and content, he helped complete the shift from classical forms to free verse, forging a modern, socially engaged poetics attuned to Iran’s struggles for justice and freedom. Synthesizing Eastern and Western influences—and blending high and popular registers—he democratized literary expression without sacrificing depth. A champion of the “everyman,” and known to his people as the “Master Poet of Liberty,” he remained committed to human rights and to the power of literature to incite change. Shamlou is celebrated in Elegies of the Earth—a sweeping centennial collection and the first major English introduction to this Nobel-nominated poet.
Niloufar Talebi is an author, translator, and multidisciplinary creator. She is the editor and translator of Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World (North Atlantic Books, 2008) and the author of the hybrid memoir Self-Portrait in Bloom (l’Aleph, 2019). Her work has been presented internationally at venues including Carnegie Hall, Stanford University, and the Tbilisi Book Festival. A Fulbright U.S. Scholar and recipient of multiple honors, including a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, Talebi’s forthcoming book, Elegies of the Earth: Selected Poems of Ahmad Shamlou (World Poetry Books, Nov. 2025), marks the poet’s centennial. She teaches Creative Writing and Creativity at Stanford Continuing Studies.