I am the heart, and he has taken me
My ka’bah is the dust upon your street,
Your face the light that makes the world complete—
My soul lives from the curling of your locks
My heart prays now to where your eyebrows meet.
Your curls are like the Christians’ cross for me6
I’m wild with longing for my champion,
For my incomparable, my dearest one
A traveler in the valley of despair,
I long for only you, all else is gone.
Love fills my limbs now and is all of me
How long must I assent to what I hate
And hide the turmoil of my inward state?
And never mention that you’re far from me,
And hypocritically preach and prate?
How long must longing be the sum of me?
My cloak and prayer mat? They’re no longer mine—
I’ll fill bright crystal glasses with red wine,
All Sinai’s valley will be filled with light
And ardent love will make the whole house shine
The wine-shop’s door will be the place for me
My love of knowledge hurts and humbles me
I cry for justice now incessantly
My love has filled my glass with truth’s pure wine . . .
From self and from the world I am set free
The search for truth is what possesses me
The servant poured wine on the world’s first day
And filled each glass that leads our minds astray
And essences were accidents, reduced
To drunken nothingness and swept away
The wine itself is drunk that is in me
At every moment love resumes its call
It summons all the world and all in all—
Whoever wants to walk this way with me,
If waves of ruin make him fear to fall
He shouldn’t venture near this sea that’s me
Up on the roof now, there and everywhere,
I am your maid, a bird trapped in your snare,
And I’m the owl that calls to you at night—
My life depends upon your being there
The pain of being me has gone from me
Shahdokht
Nineteenth century
Shahdokht lived in Malayer, in western Iran. The colloquial language in Malayer is Luri, and the fact that she wrote in Persian suggests that she was well educated, and perhaps not from a local family. The twentieth-century scholar Ali Akbar Moshir Salimi has suggested that her family may have been a provincial branch of the ruling Qajar dynasty.*
*
Each night, because of you, my teardrops fall
And lie like pearls upon my dress and shawl
And since there’s no man in these parts who’s faithful,
Shahdokht’s decided she won’t wed at all.
*
I am a girl well versed in poetry,
I am my generation’s Mahsati—7
My boast is that I’ve left the world behind;
A virgin still, at thirty—this is me.
Soltan
Mid/late nineteenth century
The daughter of Mahmud Mirza, the eldest son of Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), Soltan grew up in a literary family, and one perhaps especially favorable to the writing of poetry by women, since her father was a well-known poet and calligrapher who wrote various books on literary subjects, including one on women poets.
*
Whilst I can think of you, and wander in your street,
I don’t want paradise
What houri could compare with you? Beside your street
what heaven could suffice?
*
Watch how it is that I pass by his street, my heart—
With laughter I arrive, with weeping I depart.
*
That man whom no one’s ever seen
caught by a lover
I’ll catch him yet; his vaunted freedom
will be over.
Gowhar
Gowhar was a granddaughter, through her mother, of Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834). A book of her poetry was published in 1901; as the book was not compiled by her, this suggests that she had died by this time.
*
What I most value from my life was mine last night,8
My lips touched his sweet lips until the dawn’s first light;
My candle guttered, but until the morning broke
The sunlight, moonlight, starlight made my pillow bright.
My lap was filled with tulips from a sheaf of flowers,
His tumbling curls made me a necklace of delight;
No one can know the heavenly things I saw from him—
The sum of life, of all the world, was mine last night.
I kissed his hair and smelled his hair so constantly
My breath was musky from his hair’s sweet scent last night.
I fainted from his scent, and this is no surprise—
I clasped a sheaf of flowers till dawn assailed my sight.
At times my bolster was narcissi piled together,
At times my pillow was his curly locks last night;
Gowhar, he gave your heart’s desire, and took your soul—
My love can’t say the bargain wasn’t fair, last night.
*
Although we never act as You have told us to
We’re always seated at the feast prepared by You—
We eat there all the time, since from the first we knew
Your mercy’s something You continually renew.
Gowhar Beigum Azerbaijani
Nineteenth century
The poet’s dates and provenance are unknown, though her name suggests that she or her family came from Azerbaijan in northwest Iran.
*
If I should let the wind caress my hair,9
Its scent would lure wild deer into my snare
If I should pass a church one day, the vision
Would draw the Christian girls to my religion.
One glance of mine will make two hundred men
Whom death has taken, come to life again
Let Jesus know my miracles, inform
Him of the wondrous deeds I can perform.
Shahin Farahani
1864–1919
Shahin Farahani was a member of the same politically active family as Mariam Khanom (this page); her brother, Adib al-Mamalek Farahani (1860–1917), was a well-known poet and journalist who often expressed support for patriotic and liberal causes in his writings during the period leading up to the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11.
*
My greetings to you now, women who are concerned
for our country
Women bewildered by all that they have learned
of our country
Our country’s sinking in a whirlpool, and it’s only by
The ship of learning that salvation can be earned
for our country
And if our country’s daughters seek out knowledge they
Will be its mothers with the wisdom that they’ve learned
for our country
Woman’s the soul, and man the body of our country
With soul and body linked, new life will have returned
to our country
See that our daughters raise into the sky Moses’ white hand
And may a miracle in this way be confirmed10
for our country
And may the knotty problems that beset our country
Be undone by their nimble
fingertips, concerned
for our country
Makhfi-ye Badakhshi
1876–after 1951
The daughter of the poet Mir Mahmud Shah Ajez, Makhfi-ye Badakhshi was from Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, the northeastern province of Afghanistan. She remained unmarried and is said to have called herself Makhfi in honor of the seventeenth-century Indian poet Makhfi (whom she referred to as “Makhfi-ye Hendi”).
*
The friendship of the world cannot be trusted
Its garden shows no rose without a thorn
I saw that from Fate’s camaraderie
Nothing but heartfelt sorrow could be born
*
My heart, be separate from both worlds now, if you can—11
Lovesick, and traveling in love’s valley, be a man
Be in the desert like Majnun, a prosperous king
Forgetting obligations, home, and everything!
Don’t, like a nightingale, complain from every tree
Be like the moth who, as she burns, burns silently
And make your heart Majnun’s, bow to it and confess
Its sovereignty, whatever faith you might profess.
Nothing will ease this pain, whatever you might do—
The wine, the pourer, and the glass, all must be you.12
Farkhondeh Savoji
Late nineteenth/early twentieth century
Her father’s name was Mohammad Kazem Khan, her husband’s Sayf Lashkar-e Khaj. She lived near Saveh, in western Iran.
*
It’s winter, and the nightingales have left
Our orchards and our gardens quite bereft.
Bring us the wine that warms the soul, my boy,
That softens hearts when sipped and brings us joy;
Pour Jamshid’s wine, and Kay Kavus’s, pour us13
Wine from the famous kings who went before us,
A drop of which makes ants imagine they
Are epic heroes ready for the fray.
Bring rose-hued wine that scours away the rust
From lovers’ hearts, and cleanses them of dust.
Bring wine into the garden to revive
My weary heart that’s scarcely still alive,
Bring us that fount of life—one drop will give
A hundred corpses strength enough to live,
Bring it to me, whose soul’s so sad and wan
You’d say my hold on life has almost gone.
Bring me a goblet-full when nightfall comes
And bring me tambourines and harps and drums;
Bring me a glittering bowl brimful of wine
That shines as Badakhshan’s bright rubies shine.14
Jannat
1886–1940
A granddaughter of Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), Jannat was said to have been an infant prodigy who showed her skill as a poet while still a child. She was married at the age of thirteen to Mustafa Qoli Khan Hajeb al-Doleh, who encouraged her in her poetic ambitions. Her poetry became well known in her own lifetime, and won the admiration of a number of prominent poets of the period. Many of Jannat’s poems are well turned, fairly conventional poems on love or the vicissitudes of life, but she became best known for the political poem given here (“The branding of my land . . .” on this page).
*
My fate in life has proven, more or less,
To be to know this world’s unhappiness.
Get used to grief, my heart; ignore mankind,
Since man is ignorant of manliness—
Consort with devils or with beasts, but don’t
Confide in man the tale of your distress.
If enemies should hurt you, don’t expect
Your friends to heal you with a kind caress—
Friends’ kindness lasts a moment, and the next
They’re filled with anger, spite, and bitterness.
Good faith is built on rickety foundations—
What firm foundations hold up faithlessness!
Come then, my soul, and break your body’s hold,
Leave worldly men to treasure worldliness—
Seek out detachment and a private corner,
Not thrones and crowns and grandiose success.
Drink wine in memory of our ancient kings,
Drink copiously, and even to excess;
Be happy in recalling noble men
Since in man now there is no manliness.
*
If your dear friend is cruel to you, say nothing
If sorrow’s arrow’s pierced you through, say nothing
If you’re in love, don’t dare complain of sorrow,
And as for any cure for you, say nothing.
*
That one who steals all hearts, if he should have a heart,
that wouldn’t be so bad
If he should sympathize with them, and take their part,
that wouldn’t be so bad
How long my love for him has been my secret vow,
If for one moment he would share such secrets now
that wouldn’t be so bad
That man for whom I’ve given up this world and heaven
If he would simply give up seeing strangers even . . .
that wouldn’t be so bad
My life’s gone by in missing him, in misery—
If he should somehow say he’d like to be with me
that wouldn’t be so bad
Crazy Jannat, you’ve mixed up poetry and prose,15
If he were crazier, for me, then I suppose
that wouldn’t be so bad
*
The branding of my land, its suffering and its pain,16
Provoke my blood and tears, dampening its soil like rain—
Its sorrow makes me long to heap earth on my head,17
But all its earth is gone, as if our land had fled;
Before the enemy’s sharp lances must I yield
Since heartfelt tears and sighs are now my only shield?
I’ll travel on along your road, and leave behind
As my bequest to you, my soul and heart and mind.18
O ship of hope that sinks in seas of ignorance,
I cannot look to you now for deliverance—
I sigh so much, my land, I burn, I weep, I grieve,
I have it in my mind to quit your earth, to leave
This prison where I’ve lost all hope, and I shall go
To tell our ancient, noble kings of what I know.
I’ll say, “Our earth has gone, upon the wind it flies,
And not enough remains to make kohl for our eyes;
Where’s Cyrus, Feraydun and Kay Qobad, and where19
Is just Anushirvan to turn to in despair?20
And where is Nader, so that with his saber’s blows21
I’ll root and branch destroy the source of all our foes?
The darkness of misfortune covers us with night—
I’ll turn the dusk to dawn, night’s darkness into light . . .”
To cut short the distress I feel, all I can do,
My country, is to sacrifice myself for you.
Kasma’i
1883–1963
Kasma’i was born in Yazd in central Iran, where her father was a merchant. She learned both Turkish and Russian, and traveled widely in Iran, Russia, and Iraq, finally settling in Tabriz in northwestern Iran, where she married and had a daughter. References in her poems indicate that she was quite well-off, and this may have been an enabling factor in the relative unconventionality of much of her life. Her travels, her seeking out of other languages and cultures than her own, and the sense of dissatisfaction expressed in her poetry—her outspoken bitterne
ss about both women’s subjection to men and Iran’s subjection to the West—all indicate someone who was unusually independent for an Iranian woman of her time.
*
If I’m a member of the human race, the “noblest of creation,”
Why’s my preeminence in such a wretched situation?
If I am truly human, why when strangers look at me
Do I feel flustered and ashamed at what I think they see?
What makes me differ from the splendid lord of all mankind?
The difference is he sees and hears, and I am deaf and blind;
My country isn’t hidden on the moon, it’s here on earth—
For all my wealth though, I depend on others for my worth.
Iran is famous in the world for her nobility—
It’s this that makes me think, and gives me hope, and troubles me.
*
Even for upright men, the conscience-stricken kind,
The world of women’s still an insult to the mind;
But freedom’s here, deliverance’s day won’t wait—
Come men and women, raise your heads, don’t hesitate;
What use is wringing hands and tearing clothes in fear,
The turmoil of these times will end, the day is here.
*
We who were nourished in the East, who are from the source of light,
Why are we far from progress now, enshrouded in dark night?
The West strives and exerts itself, invents the aeroplane,
And we do nothing but sit slumped in corners, and complain.
O splendid shining sun, why has your glorious radiance made
Me so withdrawn and coy, so ugly, silent, and afraid?
My nature makes me independent, and I live at ease,
Not wanting goods or wealth, just doing as I please—
It’s casual contentment that’s confounded us, and made us
So weak and careless that the West has conquered and betrayed us.
Nimtaj Salmasi
Late nineteenth/early twentieth century
Nimtaj was from Salmas in western Azerbaijan, near the border with Turkey. Apart from the fact that her father and other relatives were killed during a joint Ottoman–Kurdish raid on Salmas in 1916, virtually nothing is known about her.
*
Iranians who want their ancient monarchs’ glory22
Must first identify the Kaveh of their story—23