Shel Silverstein: Let me be something

In this part, we will study a poem by Shel Silverstein, translated by Chista Yasrebi. It has been taken from a bilingual edition published by Namira Publication in 2000, Tehran.

The Persian text had a blank line space between every distich in the book, which we have removed. The English text has been slightly modified, too. Firstly, the hyphenated words (like now-and-then-ner) were written with spaces in between (now - and - then - ner) and secondly, somethin’ was written somthin’. We assumed these to be typographical errors and corrected them.

Now let’s turn our attention to the translation. As usual, please read the translated text first.

بگذار چيزي باشم
اگر نمي توانم هميشه مالِ تو باشم
اجازه بده گاهي، زماني از آنِ تو باشم
و اگر نمي توانم گاهي زماني از آن تو باشم
بگذار هر وقت كه تو مي گويي ، كنارِ تو باشم
اگر نمي توانم دوست خوب و پاكِ تو باشم
اجازه بده دوست پست و كثيفِ تو باشم
اگر نمي توانم عشق راستينِ تو باشم
بگذار باعث سرگرميِ تو باشم
اما مرا اين طوري ترك نكن
بگذار در زندگي تو ، دست كم چيزي باشم …

Let me be something
If I can’t be your all-the-time
Lemme be your now-and-then-ner
And if I can’t be your now-and-then
Lemme be your you-tell-me-when-ner
And if I can’t be your Mr. Clean
Lemme be your Mr. Dirty
If I can’t be your serious Love
Lemme be your just-for-funner
Baby, don’t you leave me this way…
Lemme be somethin’…

Written by Hassan Sharafoddin on February 21st, 2007 with 13 comments.
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