And bit in their pleasure the backs of their hands66
But the dancing girl, just as she hadn’t the evening before,
Didn’t smile, wasn’t happy, took no cute curtain call—
Instead her face frowned, she made fists of her hands,
The joy of her lovers didn’t please her at all
Her eyes they were feverish, and heavy with languor,
Her drunkenness showed both her pain and regret
The wine in her mind was burning and fiery, she longed
For a life filled with joy, which she’d never known yet
For all of her life she’d given others such pleasure
But pleasure had never been why her heart raced,
All her life she’d served others the wine of delight
While she’d had not a drop of it, not even a taste
And so that her crying wouldn’t make sorrow worse,
She hid her charred feelings, her lips were sealed tight,
Like a candle she was, whose flame was her longing,
Dancing for others, burning down through the night
Oh how she felt she must have her heart’s justice
And wrest all its grief from the mob in this lair
Then perhaps she’d escape from this sickening hell-hole,
Free her feet from the chains that were holding her there
Loudly she shouted, “You louts who abuse me,
Don’t throw me a flower and don’t blow me a kiss—
You’ve broken my back with this burden of pain
And I thirst for your blood—yes it’s me who says this!”
Then one of the crowd cried, “The girl’s drunk, and tonight
She’s gone far too far, it’s the drinks that she’s had;
But look how her anger has turned her face black—
It’s not drink that has done this, the poor thing’s gone mad!”
Again the girl shouted, “Just which of you, tell me,
Which one of the lot of you, tell me, which one
Tomorrow won’t reproach himself knowing
My youth faded like this until it was gone?
“Which of you? Tell me! Who’s there among you
Who’ll free me from all of the drunks gathered here?
Who’ll put all my life back in order, take my hand,
And make the road I should travel appear?”
Among the drunks the girl’s words produced silence
A strange pause in the noise, a dead quiet—and after
This moment of silence the crowd gave its answer . . .
A few scattered bursts of contemptuous laughter
*
The End of Waiting
I have a thousand hopes, and all of them are you
The start of happiness, the end of waiting’s you
Those past springs that I lived through without you,
What were they then but autumns, since the spring is you?
My heart is empty now of everything but you
So stay still where you are, be permanent and true
A shooting star’s a matter of impulsive moments
The star that mocks the darkness of the night is you
If all the people in the world desire my blood
What should I be afraid of? My loving friend is you
My heart’s a jug that’s overflowing with desire
I have a thousand hopes, and all of them are you
*
Gone from my heart, from my arms, from my memory,
Don’t look at me, I cannot bear your gaze
Don’t look at me, because your black eyes
Have left only bitter sadness in my memory
Gone from my heart, so tell me, truly, why
You’ve come back to me tonight
If you’ve come for that lover you desired
I’m not her, she is dead and I am her shadow
I’m not her, no, my heart is cold and black
Her melancholy heart had sparks of love within it
Everywhere, with everyone, whatever happened,
She longed for you, my faithless love
I’m not her, my eyes are dull and dumb
Her eyes contained so many hidden words
And that sad love in those dark eyes like night
Was more mysterious than twilight in the evenings.
No, I’m not her, it’s a long time since
These colorless lips blossomed because of your love
But there were always life-giving smiles on her lips
Sleeping like moonlight on dewy flowers
Don’t look at me, I cannot bear your gaze,
That person you want from me, I swear she’s dead
She was in my body and suddenly I don’t know
How she saw, or what she did, or where she went, or why she died
I am her grave, I am her grave, on her warm body
I placed the cold camphor of regret
She died, and in my breast this pitiless heart
Is the stone that I placed on that grave.
For What?
For what? That I stay for two hundred years
looking at cruelty and corruption,
that I see each day through to its end
each night through till dawn,
that each dawn from behind the window
I see the mocking face of the sun
and look at another day
with immense disgust
before bitter tea has touched my lips
then once again the writhing squirming struggle . . .
that I go over the tale once again
of the book of Balkh’s poet67
a cage, the whole world a cage, a cage
I think of fleeing
of pulling my cloak round my body
my head scarf over my hair . . .
to the streets of nowhere.
In the midst of depravity and misery, in this smoke,
this sorrow for all that is and is not
I begin my complaint against oppression.
Although you’ve called me again
all our friends are suffering
shall I leave them in the midst of disaster?
For what? That I enjoy myself again
For what? That your good doctors
make me well again
and I take the risk, suitcase in hand
that I’m ready to travel again
that I come, and my heart is renewed
that I come with my eyes unclouded68
that I come and among your people
I once again make a stir with my poems
But I haven’t fallen into this snowy cloud
in such a way that I’ll get out again
I don’t imagine I’ll reach safety, that I’ll emerge
from this profound disaster.
My old friend, dear friend,
leave me in this dream of winter—
it’s possible, who knows,
that I can soothe my soul and body.
If a gentle spring breeze
bringing the green of new growth
should waft across my dried-up nerves
my body might bear fruit.
*
We weep honey
we smile poison69
We’re content to be miserable
we’re miserably content
We’ve washed our hands in blood
we’ve washed blood from our hands
And nothing came of either
as we weep we smile
It was eight years, but
we didn’t know what it meant
Children in a line, we knew nothing
of how and why
In the garden, like a storm,
we snapped off every twig
From the vine’s chandelier
we broke off each bunch of grapes
If the tree flourished
it was a stubborn tree
We broke its branches,
tore up its roots
Longing for war
we brought on disaster
Now, regretting what we’ve done
we long for peace
We broke from their bodies
heads and wings
Looking to put things right
we’re busy grafting
Will it fly
will it live
This wing we sew back on
this head we’re tying on?
Lobat Vala
Born 1930
Born in Tehran, Lobat Vala was associated as a young poet with both Simin Behbahani (this page) and Forugh Farrokhzad (this page). Her poetry achieved wide popularity when she was still young, and a number of her poems were used as lyrics for popular songs. She found herself profoundly out of sympathy with the social policies of the Islamic Republic established in 1979, and in 1980 moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she lived from 1980 to 1984; she earned an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Melbourne. In 1984 she moved to London, where she now lives.70
*
Footprint
I went to see him the next morning
My cheeks bright red with last night’s shame
Telling myself tales of need and passion—
His gaze was a devilish flame
I’d words of apology on my lips
Embarrassment made my heart beat faster
My flesh was a sore inflamed with sadness
My chest hid a seething disaster
Quietly I said, “Can I ask you
To erase my image from your mind?
The event that happened between us,
Please let it disperse on the wind.”
His gaze burned my eyes; that stolen kiss
Made his passion, like a flower, expand—
He smiled at my tears so kindly
And touched his lips then with his hand,
“There is a gentle footprint here
Left by the kiss we can’t reclaim—
My caravan of grief has gone,
It’s been replaced by passion’s flame;
“I can’t forget you while my lips
Still bear that kiss’s burning trace
And even though the passion fades
Still I’ll be lost in your embrace.”
Ah me! Would that I could forever
Brand him into my memory—
But down the days’ long road love fled,
No trace of it remains in me.71
*
That friend who boasted of his pure sincerity
Had nothing in his purse but rank hypocrisy,
My hair’s turned white, but even so I was naïve
Enough to tell myself he really wanted me.
*
Filthy
Old and tired and silent
my shoulders weighed down with grief and care
far from my country and friends
impatient, in despair
I wait
in a dream’s quiet solitude,
broken winged, my soul grown faint,
on the black screen of my fearful mind I paint
the color of light
I draw flowers and fruit—
the memory of childhood’s streets
the memory of green years.
The years of folly and craziness
won’t leave my mind,
the dream of good memories, regret
for past happiness, days with no sunset,
they’ll never leave my mind.
My city that has no spring,
in mourning for light
with night’s black veil drawn over its head . . .
I cannot believe that the backs of my dreamed-of heroes
are bent beneath this weight of sorrow
I cannot believe it—
the skies of my city were not so grief-stricken!
My head whirls with this question:
Who stole the sun from my house?
How did a devil of darkness manage this deed?
Is it that kindness is asleep?
From within a mirror—
apart from which there’s nothing left
that speaks my language, feels as I do—
dread strikes me:
“That deceitful, shameless filth,
the one who stole the sun
from the sky above your house, was no one
but you.”
*
Reed-bed
I’m going to teach fish
How to live among reeds,
Just as a bird that feeds
On fish once taught me how
To live among slime and weeds.
*
Still Young
My glass still holds a drop of wine
My mouth knows sweet and bitter as still mine
I drink the wine still from the vat of our existence
Still hear dawn’s chirping chorus in the distance
On water still see moonlight’s splendor glint
Still on the breeze catch rose and pennyroyal’s scent
My body’s fire still burns within my memory
My sense of touch is still with me
I wait for spring still, still plant seeds,
Still follow where light leads . . .
Still I’m in love with tales that rouse and stir us
And still with hope sing every song and chorus
My poetry still seeks for love
And still—if wearily and lamely now—
I hope to see the Simorgh72
Upward I go, toward the peak,
Still longing for the Friend I seek
Still . . .
Come then, and smash my mirror against sorrow’s stone
Look! I’m still young
Forugh Farrokhzad
1934–67
Forugh Farrokhzad’s father was a military officer, and seems to have had little sympathy with his daughter’s artistic ambitions. In 1951, at the age of sixteen, she fell in love with the satirist Parviz Shapour, married. and gave birth to a son (Kamyar) a year later. She was divorced from her husband in 1954, and lost custody of Kamyar. In 1958 she began a relationship with the writer and film-maker Ebrahim Golestan, which lasted until her death in a car crash at the age of thirty-two. Her poetry’s technical innovations, as well as their sexually explicit frankness about women’s inner lives, made her notorious in her own lifetime; her writings won her many admirers and imitators, and have made her the best-known Iranian Persian-language woman poet of the twentieth century both within Iran and outside of it. She made a highly respected documentary film, The House Is Black, in 1962 about a leper colony in Azerbaijan; while working on this film she adopted the son of two of the colony’s inhabitants.73
*
Captive74
I want you, and I know my heart’s desire,
To hold you in my arms, will never come to me;
You are the sky that’s clear and bright—and I’m
A captive bird, a cage’s corner’s home to me
And from these cold gray bars I gaze
With longing and with wonder at your face;
I think that help will come, and that I’ll spread
My wings, and fly toward you from this place
I think that in a moment when the jailer’s careless
From this silent cell I’ll fly up and be free
And I shall laugh then in the jailer’s face
And start my life with you there next to me
And then I think I know I’ll never have
The courage to escape this cage; it’s clear
That even if my jailer would allow it
I lack the strength to fly away from here
Each morning here, behind the cage’s bars,
A child looks at me, and then smiles at me,
And if I start to sing a cheerful song
He forms his lips into a kiss for me
And if, O sky, I one day want to leave
This silent prison cell and fly away
What shall I say to that child’s weeping eyes?
“Forgive me, I’m a captive bird,” I’ll say
I am a candle, with my burning heart
I fill with light the ruins that surround me;
And if I choose now to be dark and silent
I will undo the household that’s around me
*
The Ring
A little girl giggled and said,
“This golden ring, what is its secret?
What’s the secret of this ring that grips
My finger so tightly? Take it!
“What’s the secret of this shining ring,
This ring that’s so bright and glittering?”
The man was puzzled and replied,
“But your good fortune, life itself, is in this ring.”
And everyone cried, “Congratulations!”
The little girl said, “I’m sorry that
I ever doubted what it meant.”
The years went by. One night
A woman looked down sadly at the shining ring
And saw there all the days when she had hoped
To have her husband’s faithful love . . .
Hopes that had come to nothing, nothing at all.
With what bewilderment the woman cried,
“Alas, I see this ring that glitters still,
That shines like this, it is the ring
Of servitude, of slavery.”75
*
Sin
I sinned, a sin that was all pleasure,
Within the fiery warmth of his embrace
I sinned within his arms
That were like iron, ardent, fierce.
Within that intimately silent darkness
I stared at his mysterious eyes,
My heart convulsive in my trembling breast
As I perceived the longing in his eyes
Within that intimately silent darkness