Ode to My Earrings

This is for you who continually
tremble
whirl
shimmy
You are who green at heart
With a slender frame —

I’ve reserved a place for you
On my shoulders
Where you can live,
where, hey!
you can dance to every wind,
Move to every tune
Here on my shoulders
And sing a melody for the others.
Happiness is the color yellow —
it shines
it spins
Even if it is night —
Even if the wind is silent
And anxiety’s lamp is ignited.

~ Elaha Sahel, translated by Farzana Marie. Reprinted with permission from Load Poems Like Guns, Holy Cow! Press

Elaha Sahel was born in 1984 in Kabul, Afghanistan. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Herat University in Persian Literature and her work has appeared in several anthologies. Sahel’s first collection of poems was published in 2010 in Herat, where she used to live with her husband and two children.

“Some of the symbolism in Elaha’s poems provided an interesting challenge in translation. In ‘Ode to My Earrings,’ for instance, the poet uses the phrase ‘happiness is the color yellow,’ which is also the title of her collection. In a conversation about this idea, Elaha pointed out that she was inverting the expected, since in Dari happiness might not be associated the with the color yellow as it is in English (like sunshine, or perhaps in American culture, a Walmart smiley face). Although a subtlety, in Afghan and Persian culture the color yellow can be associated with separation and sickness.”
~ Farzana Marie