3 poems by WCLJ Poet in Residence, Mansour Noorbakhsh

To the extent of all your surroundings

           __Dedicated to all working children.

           “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” __Frederick Douglass

Maybe you have been sitting for hours behind trees or in the shade of rocks and hills waiting for the train to come.

Maybe you are bored of waiting. Maybe you are disappointed. Maybe you have gone to the point of changing your decision and going back. When the afternoon heat has you drenched in sweat.

But the train has finally arrived. With his awesome noise like a roaring monster. With its imposing body that shakes the ground and your whole body with every rotation of its wheels.

After all this waiting, now it’s time to scream in unison with the terrible sound of the train and not worry someone shouts angrily “Shut up”.

You can shake your hands and your whole body with all your heart, like a little demon next to a big demon, next to a train that roars and grinds its chest on the ground and moves forward.

Shake your whole body and shout as you run side by side, next to the roaring train. Raise your hands with clenched fists and scream at the top of your lungs power. Run with all your body. Show yourself to all the phenomena around you, so that you forget everything, even the demon of the train.

All this doesn’t take more than a few minutes. Finally, the train passes there. You stop running and screaming. But what remains is a deep silence that casts a shadow over everything. It is as if everything has become silent in front of you with mixed respect and fear. Then you feel yourself more than before. You don’t scream anymore. You don’t run anymore. But you feel yourself, your body, though small, but you feel it as wide as all your surroundings.  You are calm now, like a river that moves in a wide bank with a peaceful appearance. Your restlessness and worries are temporarily over. You slowly return with a broader sense of all the things around you. Now you walk slowly, but you still feel that the ground is shaking under your feet.

Although you are now breathing slowly, but still those unfinished screams jump out of your chest like scattered coughs unconsciously for a while. It’s as if the little monster is spitting out all his suppressed feelings of injustice, humiliation, and the suffering of working as a slave, running barefoot, and sleeping hungry.

And your hot and feverish cheeks have bloomed now, as if they have tasted a real lovely kiss.

The Ripe Resistance
For the peace Noble Prize winner 2023, Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian jailed human rights activist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narges_Mohammadi

A smile can be planted.
A smile sprouts. 
Grows. Gives flowers.

I am your smile in your resistance.
Reflected in all farms. 
Expected in all harvests. 

I grew when you saw me. 
I needed hope in the endless tumult of deceivers.
Amidst the melee of criminals. 

And you talked to me. You brought me hope.
Like every sprout that brings the spring.
Then, I became a believer in happiness. 
Ready to share. 
In the harvest season. Ripe. 

I was you when you became hopeful. 





Land and Blood 
A response to terrorist attack by Hamas in October 2023

Only death asks for excuses. 
Life is a flowing river. 
Not tied to any land. 
Not excused by blood. 

If your ethnicity chooses bloodshed, 
refuse it. 
If you love your land, 
let it not be soaked with blood. 

To move from barbarism toward true faith 
we must choose not to stain our hands 
with each other’s blood. 

Hope is nothing but being carried in the river of life. 
And love is leaving assumptions behind. 
Isn’t it the true faith?

If your god directs you to barbarism, refuse it. 

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Mansour Noorbakhsh writes and translates poems in both English and Farsi, his first language. He tries to be a voice for freedom, human rights and environment in his writings. He believes a dialog between people around the world is an essential need for developing a peaceful world, and poetry helps this dialog echoes the human rights. Currently he is featuring The Contemporary Canadian Poets in a weekly Persian radio program https://persianradio.net/. The poet’s bio and poems are translated into Farsi and read to the Persian-Canadian audiences. Both English (by the poets) and Farsi (by him) readings are on air. This is a project of his to build bridges between the Persian-Canadian communities by way of introducing them to contemporary Canadian poets. His book about the life and work of Sohrab Sepehri entitled, “Be Soragh e Man Agar Miaeed” (trans. “If you come to visit me”) is published in 1997 in Iran. And his English book length poem; “In Search of Shared Wishes” is published in 2017 in Canada. His English poems are published in “WordCity monthly” and “Infinite Passages” (anthology 2020 by The Ontario Poetry Society). He is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and he is an Electrical Engineer, P.Eng. He lives with his wife, his daughter and his son in Toronto, Canada.

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