TRANSLATION

“The Time Is Some Hour Late at Night” and other poems

Translated from Kurdish by Shene Mohammed

By BASHDAR SAMI  |  23 FEB 2026

THE TIME IS SOME HOUR LATE AT NIGHT
Dad, it’s really cold.
I know son.
Dad, it’s not cold at all,
that was a joke.
I know son. It was a joke.
Dad, you’re watching a movie?
Yes son. I am.
Dad, is the movie about the same naked woman?
Yes son. It’s about her.
Dad, that naked woman walked by our house
just yesterday!
I know son.
Dad, that was a joke,
the naked woman didn’t walk by our house.
I know son…it was a joke.

Dad, you’re a strange man.
Your mom once said that same thing son.

Dad, I’m getting tired.
Me too son.

 

A SCREEN SHATTERS
I finally
began to ignore
the things that had crowded my head.

I’ve been living like a normal person for a while now.
I eat breakfast and go to work,
like a normal person.

I often go on evening walks
with my wife and daughter.

One night, my mother told my father:
You know,
he’s looking better these days!

 

PAIN
The first letter I pin down
reminds me of
you with a bracelet of clove,
and the words unwritten in our heads,
and like summer
steam rises from my wound,
and the open space becomes memories,
and without your hands
my lips are lonely
I burn
and think of your throat rather than water

I do have a secret if I don’t hide it with things,
my wound aches beneath my shirt,
if I cry just a bit more
I will scatter at my feet

With a necklace I remembered your neck,
I didn’t cry, but
I told my wife:
right at that moment, a woman left me

If you hadn’t left, I would have kissed your shoulder,
counted your fingers,
sniffed your skin,
I would have called your hair beauty,
named your neck love, but
with your leaving, wounds sprout in me,
I bid farewell to loving, and
will never call a woman’s arrival love

I smell you in my skin
even if you’re not there beside me
love
is you

In front of your photo, I was wounded
88 times
and thought of suicide,
but it scared me off, not just once,
twice

It wasn’t that late at night, but
the coffee I made when you weren’t around,
when I couldn’t tell you here you are
I cried, and
I faced up to love, a wounded corpse

Wounded like strangers,
when love can’t sleep,
my wound
calls for you

◆

In memoriam: Bashdar Sami passed away on December 27, 2025.

Bashdar Sami was a Kurdish poet and photographer. In 2007, he received the Kurdish Writers’ Union’s Newroz Festival Award for Youth Poetry. He received the Youth of the Year Award for Poetry in 2010 from the Ministry of Culture and Youth. He held his first photography exhibition in 2013. He’s the author of three collections, Today is Saturday if Nothing Goes Wrong (2020), Walking in the Direction of the Respected Dead (2013), and Tomorrow is Another Day (2012). Sami received the Galawezh Literary Prize for Poetry in 2011 and 2014. His collected poems, I’m Afraid of Flowers, were published by Balinde in 2025.

Shene Mohammed is a translator and teaches literary translation. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. Her book-length publication includes the autobiography of Hejar Mukiryanî, The Food of the Mosque Servant (KCAC, 2023). She is an assistant editor, working with Dr. Alana Levinson-LaBrosse, on the anthology of 19th-century Kurdish poetry (Deep Vellum, 2027). She has served as managing editor of Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. Her writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry, World Literature Today, and Modern Poetry in Translation. She is the Board Outreach and Translation Officer at Henar Press, and currently serves as Forum Director of the Kurdish Studies Forum at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.

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