Poems from a lost lost land in a foreign country: about Ali Schirasi, Persian poet in German tongue

(Persepolis, ancient Persian capital, now ruins; wikipedia en/GerardM/GNU)

On twitter I tweeted lyrics by Persian poet Ali Schirasi, who has been living in Germany since the Ayatollah revolution in his country.
This is his website including a blog, both posted in German & in Farsi, not in English. The now 69 years old was born in a small village near Tehran and became a teacher for the yound children at the early age of 16. Later he studied at university, became a maths teacher and coached students for university entrance tests.

In the 1960s, he was one of the first Persian teachers to help building up a union; 1975 he was imprisoned by the Shah regime together with his wife Solaleh, a maths teacher like him, and came free 3 years later after an intervention by the International Red Cross; 1983 he was imprisoned again: this time by the Iranian Mullah regime. Ali Schirasi escaped from prison and together with his wife, in 1987 fled the Iran for good. The couple makes a living as authors and lecturers on Persian culture and traditions in South Germany, in a town on the banks of
Lake Constance. They write books together and by themselves, awarded with many prizes. Ali Schirasi has published some collections of poetry; they are all written in German. In his native Persia, Ali Schirasi, the poet, is unknown.

I know lots of elderly men like Ali Schirasi: most of them liberal thinking academics who were a thorn in the side both of the Shah and of the Mullah regime. Germany, my country, gave them shelter when their country, Persia, was lost in the hands of scums and fanatics. Some of them I found as sellers - at local flea markets; but they´d kept their dignty. Higly scholared, friendly, polite, respectful, esp. to women, so different from the noisy and trashy majority of sellers - German and not German - you find at German flea markets usually. These men sell carpets, jewelry, watches and optical instruments like binoculars and cameras. Always good for a surprise. Can you imagine a conversation on a flea market with a Persian binocular seller about Zoroastrianism? So couldn´t I, but I had such a conversation. Showed me what a power is in Persian civilisation.

Some weeks ago I came across a fine copy of a collection of poems written by Ali Schirasi. Inscribed in green ink. and with a Persian sign under the inscription. The small book has a dark yellow cover with a fine vignette on the front and was published at Staphanus Edition/Udingen/Lake Constance, 1st edition 1997 (a small publishing house that doesn´t exist anymore, like so many of its kind). The copy looks like this one shown at Ali Schirasi´s website.

A quotation from the poem "Tanz unter dem Apfelbaum" bei Ali Schirasi

V Das Revolutionstribunal

Der Vorsitzend:
ein junger Molla
mit langem Bart.

Die Zeugen:
die Hüter der Revolution.
Die Angeklagten:
Mann und Frau,
Jung und Alt,
Klein und Groß,
Braut und Bräutigam
in ihren farbenfrohen Kleidern.

Zur Last gelegt wird:
der Braut - das Tanzen,
dem Bräutigam - das Tanzen,
allen - das Tanzen.

In each of his poems you feel the author´s deep longing for his lost Persia. May his dreams come true soon.

Anybody interested in the copy? please, send me a mail.