I sat beside him in a turmoil of uncertainty—
His lips spilled their desire on mine
And I escaped my crazy heart’s long misery
I whispered in his ear the words of love,
“I want you, O my love,
I want your arms around me, giving life,
I want you, O my crazy love”
Desire’s flame flickered in his eyes
And red wine danced within the glass—
My body in the yielding mattress, drunk
With love, and trembling on his breast
I’ve sinned, a sin that was all pleasure,
Beside his body, trembling, hardly conscious—
O God, what do I know of what I did
Within that intimately silent darkness?
*
Bathing
To bathe my body in the waters of a spring
I took my clothes off in the mild warm air
Night’s silence tempted my sad heart
To tell its sorrows to the waters there
How cool the water was! The glistening ripples
Murmured around me, as if in love with me,
As if with gentle crystal hands they drew
My soul and body into them completely
From far away a wind blew, and in no time
Scattered a flowery chaplet on my hair
Wild pennyroyal’s lovely pungent scent
Assailed my nostrils from the breathing air
My eyes closed, I was silent, emptied of emotion
As there against the soft fresh grass my body pressed
Just like a woman nestling in her lover’s arms—
I slipped into the water gently and at rest
nd suddenly the water’s trembling thirsty lips
Were kissing my legs with feverish intensity . . .
I was content to let them, as if happy-drunk—
My flesh, the sinful water’s soul, made one in me
*
The Broken Mirror
Yesterday, in memory of you, and of
Our heartfelt love, I thought to wear
My green blouse; I stared at my face in the mirror,
And slowly took the hair-band from my hair
I dabbed my head and breasts with scent,
Round my coquettish eyes I penciled kohl
I shook my hair out over my shoulders,
Slowly, at my mouth’s corner, I placed a mole
Then to myself I said, “How sad that he’s not here
To be bewitched by my flirtatious guile,
To see my green blouse on my body, and to say
‘How lovely you look now,’ and smile
“As he’s not here to stare at my black pupils
And see the image of his own face there
Why spread my hair like this tonight? Where are
His fingers, to make their home within my hair?
“But he’s not here to fall into my arms,
To be made crazy by the perfume of my breast
O mirror, I could die with all this longing and regret
And he’s not here to clasp my body to his chest.”
I stared at the mirror as it heard me out, and said
“Can you solve this problem of mine? Is there some way?”
It broke, and cried out to express its grief,
“O woman, You’ve broken my heart, what can I say?”
*
In Love with Sadness
I wish I were like fall . . . I wish I were like fall
I wish I were like fall, silent, with no desires at all
My wishes’ leaves would one by one turn sallow-gold
My eyes’ sun would grow cold
The heaven of my breast would fill with pain
And suddenly a storm of grief would seize my heart
Like rain my tears would start
And stain my dress
Oh . . . how lovely then, if I were like the fall
Feral and bitter, with colors seeping into one another, so beautiful
In my eyes a poet would read . . . a heavenly poem
In my chest a lover’s heart would flare with fire
And in its sparks a hidden pain
My song . . .
Like a breeze’s voice, with broken wings,
The scent of grief would drip on hearts grown tired of things.
In front of me
The bitter face of a new winter:
Behind me
Summer’s sudden love, all its commotion.
My breast
The home of sadness, pain, suspicion
I wish I were like fall . . . I wish I were like fall
*
A Wind-Up Doll
More than all this, oh yes,
More than all this one can remain silent
For long hours, one can stare
Motionless, with the fixed gaze of the dead
At a cigarette’s smoke
At a cup’s shape
At the faded flowers on the rug
At an imaginary line on the wall
With a dry claw
One can pull the curtains aside and see
Rain pelting down in the street
A child with his colored kites
Standing in an archway
A clapped-out old cart hurrying noisily
From the empty square
One can stay where one is
Next to the curtains, but blind, deaf
One can scream
In an utterly absurd voice that’s all lies,
“I love . . .”
In a man’s strong arms
One can be a beautiful healthy female,
With a body like a leathern cloth
With two large firm breasts
In the bed of a drunkard, a fool, a drifter
One can sully an innocent love
With sly contempt one can make fun
Of every marvelous mystery
One can solve a crossword puzzle alone
One can feel pleased with oneself alone, for finding a pointless answer
Yes, a pointless answer, one with five or six letters
One can kneel for a lifetime
With one’s head bowed before a cold shrine
One can see God in an unnamed grave
One can find faith in a worthless coin
One can rot in a mosque’s cubicles
Like an old reciter of pilgrims’ prayers
One can be like zero, always the same
Through subtraction, addition, multiplication . . .
One can think of your eyes, cocooned in their anger,
Like colorless buttons on an old shoe
In the pit of oneself, one can dry up like water
Ashamed, one can hide the beauty of a moment
As if it were a ridiculous black and white snapshot
At the bottom of a chest.
In the frame of an empty day one can place
The picture of someone convicted, defeated, crucified
One can cover the crack in the wall with masks
One can get by with more futile pictures than this
One can be like wind-up dolls
Seeing one’s own world with glass eyes
Lying in a baize-lined box
With a body stuffed with straw
Lying for years in folds of spangled tulle
And at every shameless squeeze of one’s hand
One can cry out for no reason and say,
“Oh, how happy I am, so happy!”
*
Couple
Night comes
and after night, darkness
after darkness
eyes
hands
and breathing, breathing, breathing
and the sound of water
that falls drip drip drip from the faucet
then two
red dots
from two lit cigarettes
the ticking of the clock
and two hearts
and two lonelinesses
Tahereh Saffarzadeh
1936–2008
Born in Sirjan, in the southeast of Iran, Tahereh Saffarzadeh was a prolific poet, and having declared that “faith is the only source of deliverance from the wasteland of contemporary Iran,” she became a prominent supporter of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In addition to her poetry she wrote extensively on theological subjects, including a book on translations of the Qor’an, as well as her own bilingual translation of the Qor’an into Persian and English.76
*
Neighbor
My neighbor
is a symbol of men in the city
each morning
he slowly in his mind
counts the steps down
and in the middle of the steps
he straightens his tie
blocking the way
My neighbor
is grave and polite
in the way that modest traditional brides are
from beneath his eyelids he watches
for the luck of a bridegroom
to appear on some favorable road
and turn this dull sluggish life
into something exciting
into something fortunate
*
Birthplace
I haven’t seen my birthplace
the place where my mother
beneath a ceiling
laid down her body’s heavy burden
it’s still living
the first tick-tock of my little heart
in the stove’s chimney
in the crevices between the old bricks;
and the place of that ashamed look
is still visible on the room’s door and walls
my mother’s look
at my father
and my grandfather
her smothered voice said
“It’s a girl”
The midwife trembled
worried about her fee for cutting the cord
knowing there’d be no circumcision celebration
The first time I visit my birthplace
I’ll strip my mother’s ashamed look
from the wall
and there, where the distinct beating of my pulse began,
I’ll make my declaration:
in my unsullied hands
there’s no lust to clench my fists or strike out
I’m not going to get roaring drunk
I don’t think it’s glorious to kill people
I wasn’t raised at the table
of male supremacy
*
Walls
Walls are on the move
walls have started to talk
silent submissive walls
walls subservient to the palace
walls bent over by the government
—all from the breath of masses surging forward
ancient walls
middle-aged
these blind witnesses of tragic events
these silent witnesses of oppression and torture
have now begun to talk
have now begun to move
have now stepped forward
but how quickly they are striding forward
these children
who have now begun to talk
these old men
who are now moving forward77
Mina Assadi
Born 1943
Born in Sari, Iran, Mina Assadi has worked as a journalist, and has written songs for a number of well-known Iranian singers, as well as numerous books of poetry. Much of her poetry is on political subjects, and she has been an outspoken opponent of the government of Iran’s Islamic Republic. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.
*
The Dictator’s Message
O poets
return,
we have swept
your homeland clean
of thorns and splinters
O writers
return,
to make a record of your works
we have ordered paper from all over the world
O mothers
return,
we have made all the prisons
into schools and universities
O young people
return,
and for your country’s future
lay a new foundation
O painters
return,
and on war’s blood-soaked walls
paint the white dove of peace
O architects
return,
and for all these returnees
build houses over the corpses
of their dead, who stayed and struggled
*
There’s sunshine and the days are dark
there’s moonlight and I can’t see
there’s a veil hanging before my eyes
this season is a season of flight and being silent
a season of being lost in an onslaught of ruin
a season of sleeplessness and distress
this season is a season for cutting down branches
a season of the gallows, of torture and sentencing
a season of cells crowded together
a season for forgetting prison
a season that’s good for buying and eating and sleeping
this season is a season of “What’s it to me?”
a season of profit and loss and assessing the right time
for closing Marx and reading the Qor’an
a season of bragging in poems with fake language
a season of “me, me,” of lies and pretension
a season of sucking up to oneself with a microphone
a season of the viruses of fame and reputation
a season of going along with “Death to the Leader”
and then sleeping in a corner of one’s house
I’m forgotten and decency is silent
And you are hanging from love’s gallows
There’s sunshine and the days are dark
there’s moonlight and I can’t see
Nazanin Nezam Shahidi
1954–2004
Nazanin Nezam Shahidi was born in Tehran and graduated from Tehran University with an MA in Arabic Language and Literature. Her first book of poems was well received, and she was about to publish her second book when she died unexpectedly at the age of fifty.
*
Game
Another moment
we stop
because of a dream
as a solitary child pauses
from her game
when her purple kite
unexpectedly tears
and a gasp of air suddenly
catches in her throat
Another moment
the dream in the sand castle
collapses
castles with no knights
ramparts with no princesses walking there
But for another moment
give me love
so that I can draw a line
on t
he walls of the world
to my own extent
where it stops
that’s where I stop
Fevzieh Rahgozar Barlas
Born 1955
Fevzieh Rahgozar Barlas was born in Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, and graduated from Istanbul University in 1977. She briefly worked for the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, and in 1979 she went into exile; she has an MA from the University of Washington (1996).
*
An Innocent Little Girl
The little girl is innocent
they’ve put henna on her hands
they’ve plaited her hair beautifully
they’ve put kohl round her eyes
they’ve dyed her eyebrows
they’ve applied red and white makeup to her doll-like face
like poor girls’ tattered dolls
she now looks ridiculous
The little girl is innocent
she doesn’t see herself
she’s dazzled by her blouse that’s woven with gold thread
the room smells of old rose-water, milk, and sweat
breath suffocates within their chests
the women sing and dance with tambourines and little drums
the little girl smiles
Women tie white flowers for good fortune,
and second-hand gold jewelry
within her ringlets that are wet with sweat
The little girl thinks
she is a doll
the little girl is innocent
she doesn’t know anything
Her mother looks at her
emptily staring, the hollows of her eyes
filled with pain
in his own world, her father
counts the money
and the old bridegroom
is really happy
The little girl is innocent
she doesn’t know the difference between henna and blood
they’ve prepared her beautifully
for weeping,
she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know . . .
Soheila Amirsoleimani
Born 1960
Soheila Amirsoleimani is an Associate Professor of Persian Studies at the University of Utah; her scholarly work is mainly concerned with eleventh-century Persian historical texts. She writes poetry in both Persian and English.
*
Ghazni
This family whose story I am writing78
took the name of a city
to the east of Khorasan
this city’s name is Ghazni
they came from beyond the River Syr Darya
they came as slaves and became kings
they came powerless and became powerful
and sat among the scribes of Khorasan
among the scribes of Balkh and Nayshapur and Bayhaq