The Mirror of My Heart

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The Mirror of My Heart Page 18

by Unknown


  from the court in Bokhara they learned the ceremonies of sovereignty79

  from the court in Bokhara they acquired the custom of writing

  they were horsemen armed with bows and arrows

  they became fine calligraphers, eloquent speakers

  and trampled down Indian temples

  they plundered the treasures of India

  they sat among the scholars of Khwarazm80

  with Khwarazmi and Biruni81

  Farrokhi and Onsori and Manuchehri wrote poetry for them82

  Bayhaqi and Maymandi and Ali Qarib sat in their courts83

  This family whose story I am writing

  hanged Hasanak84

  this family whose story I am writing

  left Hasanak on the gallows as a spectacle

  for seven years

  this family became dust, the dust

  of their glory can be seen in Lashkar Bazaar

  This family whose story I am writing

  took the name of a city

  a city to the east of Khorasan

  the name of this city

  is Ghazni

  Farzaneh Khojandi

  Born 1960

  Farzaneh Khojandi was born in Khojand, in northern Tajikistan; she is considered to be the foremost contemporary Tajik poet.

  *

  Like an uninhabited island, I’m getting used to silence

  Forgotten one, my fame approaches your rare presence

  Being alone is a pleasure, a pleasure you’ll discover,

  And after that you won’t want embraces from a lover

  Like the sky, I don’t want the clothes of hypocrisy

  Better a shroud than such a cloak of misery

  At thirty-six, like a child, there’s weeping in one’s heart

  It’s too late for a season of wild desires to start

  A sensitive heart draws someone looking for affection

  When could your light shoulders accept such a heavy burden?

  You told me, “You don’t know that tasting apples is forbidden”

  But in the apple juice the vendors sell that taste is hidden . . .

  Beneath the evil skies there are six kinds of feebleness;

  Where can one search for Seyavash, for strength true men possess?85

  Azita Ghahreman

  Born 1962

  Born in Mashhad, Azita Ghahreman has made her home in Sweden since 2006. As well as books of poetry in Persian, she has written three books in Swedish.

  *

  Alleys in a Far-off Land

  I still dream

  of my red bicycle

  on the green shore of summer,

  of the shadow of my hair

  spread out in the water

  and my homework

  spattered with grape-seeds.

  Getting older,

  growing tall, was difficult

  in a place of thorns and stones

  letting the rainbow-colored marbles slip from my hand, one by one

  without a playmate

  sitting at the side of the alley

  with a rusty bicycle in a shed

  a photograph of green highways on the wall.

  *

  Eve

  I come from a land of ancient days

  from Eve’s simple anxieties,

  Mariam’s gnostic sorrow86

  Rahil’s fourteen years of waiting87

  Zuleikha’s tormented longing88

  I was always wandering in search of your beautiful face

  O love.

  I injured myself

  and stayed awake all night

  chanting your name

  and my days were all spent

  searching for your voice

  as if it could be heard in the breeze.

  The thousand years of my life

  are a hidden waiting

  in the breath of the Judas trees and waves and spring.

  All of my moments

  are simply a commentary

  on the scent of your presence

  the shadow of your passing by

  and your leaving me

  In the desert of longing for what’s gone89

  despised

  I am stranded there, in my thirst,

  like Hagar

  Parween Pazhwak

  Born 1967

  Parween Pazhwak was born in Kabul, and is from a prominent literary and diplomatic family. She completed a medical degree, intending to practice in Afghanistan, but became a refugee after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and sought asylum in Canada.

  *

  Mother’s Shared Blouse

  I put your blouse on, mother

  and the scent of our house

  the scent of smiles and kindness and trust

  the scent of our garden

  with the caged canaries’ twittering

  the scent of the window

  with our neighbor’s rooster crowing

  the scent of bread

  the scent of people’s sorrow

  the scent of the flowers our father planted in our garden

  the scent of the angry wind blowing from the martyrs’ graves overwhelmed me

  I put your blouse on, mother

  and the sound of the pigeons in our house’s passageway

  filled my heart with their cooing

  I put your blouse on, mother

  and went back to you

  to your kind world

  to my own familiar earth

  to beloved Kabul!

  I put your blouse on, mother

  and found my sisters again

  and found my friends again

  and my hopes came back to me one by one

  and I saw once again

  the reflection of my smile in the brail

  of green water in our water-tank

  I put your blouse on, mother

  and I called on God

  with the name I called Him when I was a child

  and I prayed for you, mother

  I prayed for you . . .

  If I wrap your blouse

  around our wild almond tree

  it will blossom

  If I spread it over

  the dried-up twigs of our grape-vine

  it will cast shade

  If I entrust your blouse

  to the wind

  once again lights will shine in the foothills of our mountains,

  Aseh and Shirdarvazeh

  If I let your blouse

  wander in the alleyways

  the orphans will find clothes

  If I could divide up

  your blouse, they would not be able

  to divide up our land!

  If the dried-up well in our garden

  could remember your blouse

  it would give water again

  it would give to our hearts

  an image of morning and sunlight

  and we would all remember

  the shared blouse of our mother

  the shared blouse of our mother . . .

  Khaledeh Forugh

  Born 1972

  A native of Kabul, Khaledeh Forugh has an MA in Persian Language and Literature from Kabul University and a PhD from the National University of Tajikistan in Doshanbeh. She is a member of the Department of Persian Studies at Kabul University, and has published numerous books of poetry, a novel, and a volume of literary criticism.

  *

  It Came from the Past

  It came here from the past, it came in its magnificence,

  Rudaki was its presence, and Rabe’eh its innoc
ence90

  Its green eyes glittered with the vividness of life itself,

  Life’s waters flowed within its poets’ lyrics and laments.

  It came here from the past, through complicated branching ways,

  It opened roads from roads, they were its guide and its defense,

  It came here from the past as if it sang like Nakisa,91

  From King Parviz’s time it brought its regal radiance,92

  And in its voice was music sorrow gave and Barbad played,93

  His song a river, and his voice a moon of eloquence.

  Its breaths were Avicenna’s and its steps were Ferdowsi’s,

  And it was blasphemy and faith and known experience;

  The steps of Ferdowsi paced out a noble epic meter94

  And Avicenna’s breaths sought knowledge and intelligence—95

  Knowledge was his intent, and his beginning too was knowledge,

  A spirit from the past accompanied his search for sense,

  It came out of the past and it was nourished by the past

  And from the past it brought the day of his accomplishments.

  The palace of the first Darius was its royal home

  And his Atossa’s eyes, Atossa’s eyes, its residence;96

  It gave its stature to the towering castle of Jamshid

  And with its cloak it hid the ladder of his arrogance.97

  It came here from the past and it was agony or fire—

  Hafez was all its tears, and they were its deliverance,98

  And it was poetry or pain, a history or tradition,

  Its veins were Bayhaqi, the Masnavi its glorious sense.99

  It trod the alleys of existence in its modern form

  And from the past a reed flute’s tones were its accompaniments.

  It raised love’s hand, and gradually it grew and it matured,

  Its prayer was Mowlavi’s for all that freedom represents—

  It was the most lost fantasy and the most endless bridge

  And Shams’s burning love, and all his unrestrained laments;100

  It came here from the past and was it strong now or grown weak?

  Whence did it come, and where was it, that knew no hence or whence?

  It came here from the past, the ancestor of all the world,

  And saw that it was blessed now by its own essential sense.

  *

  The Empty Alleys of the World

  These ancient mountain slopes are poets, even so,

  Escaped now from themselves, contemporaries we know,

  These ancient mountain slopes, the winds’ assault by night,

  They’ve traveled here from many, many years ago.

  Home to the sleepers in the cave they’re full of life101

  Within the empty alleys of the world they wander to and fro

  And they were there, confronting Moses’ heart,

  As they were passers-by of weeping Farhad’s woe.102

  They nourish myths, their poems are ambiguous,

  They’re visible, high summits thrust up from below;

  They’ve burned within themselves, they’re lost within themselves

  Though lost beyond all loss they’re near at hand, and though

  Their voices seethe with silence, still

  The last word’s always theirs, both now and long ago;

  They are the high imaginings of God

  These ancient mountain slopes are poets, even so.

  Mandana Zandian

  Born 1972

  Born in Esfahan, Dr. Mandana Zandian is a graduate of Shahid Beheshti Medical School in Tehran, and is currently a research oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. She moderates a weekly Persian-language radio program on poetry and related cultural subjects.

  *

  Death too will grow old one day

  he’ll become weary

  and sit down,

  he’ll bend over, with his head on his knees

  he’ll hug himself, like life

  and stretch out his hands, hesitantly, in the alphabet of stone fragments, walls, and

  drag words out of the dark earth’s depths and

  bring them together, sculpt them, break off bits

  in a faded voice

  and he’ll think the moon

  is a kinder glance for leaving, and

  love

  a past more complete than the road, and

  he’ll stand up

  draw breath, blink

  freed

  on the threshold of the short pause

  that is life

  *

  Words are alive

  they breathe

  they dream

  they make love and

  like pain

  they twist in death’s waist

  they give up the ghost and

  they become poems and

  they remain . . .

  we are not alone;

  we are wandering birds

  that do not wake up

  from words’ dream

  Mana Aqai

  Born 1973

  Mana Aqai was born in Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf, and moved to Sweden with her family in 1978. She has an MA in Iranian Languages from Uppsala University, and now lives in Stockholm, where she works as a professional translator.

  *

  You said: “Be the bride of my dreams

  and I’ll come and wake you with seven kisses”

  and seven times you wrote “black” to break the red spell

  and seven times I went under the snow

  so that one by one snowflakes would rest on my eyelids

  and the velvet of my dreams would grow more white

  and this is how seven nights and seven days passed for me

  from the moment that the story’s wicked stepmothers

  saw themselves as more beautiful in the mirror

  every night I say, The prince is on his way, he’ll arrive

  every night seven young horses neigh in my dreams

  and I start up seven times

  and I see seven men behind the window-panes

  all dwarfs

  *

  Stains

  They came late

  out of narrow suffocating passageways

  like bloodstains

  from cuts on the fingers of a sleepless woman

  they spilled onto the paper

  and couldn’t be washed out

  or cleaned with a handkerchief

  behind each one

  there was an unhealed scar

  an unspoken pain

  and a cry that, out of fear,

  was imprisoned in cells’ depths

  they were uneven red circles

  my poems

  and the more I looked at them

  they grew wider and wider

  until one day my eyes

  couldn’t see the white spaces anymore

  Pegah Ahmadi

  Born 1974

  Pegah Ahmadi was born in Tehran and studied Persian Literature at the University of Tehran. She published three books of poetry in Iran, which were subsequently banned due to her political outspokenness. Ahmadi left the country as a political refugee in 2009, and has since lived in the West. She has published ten books in all, two of which have been translated into German; she has also translated a volume of Sylvia Plath’s poetry into Persian.

  *

  Why in the depths of no-progress is nothing moving?

  language is a cutting off of terror

  look, blood doesn’t flow from the wrist,

  and neither does it clot

  and I, whose eye was an open
history of intensity,

  throw a razor into the abyss.

  Drag me into the street

  that is the dark castle of life

  look back at your shadow, so that it won’t fall from the rope.

  Nothing is more frightening than when nothing happens

  how does language die?

  where does it make an absence?

  cut me off, so that my being will gush out

  take me as a whole

  and cut me into pieces

  the revolution has collapsed

  and for half a century love has been a monster.

  Stand here, on the harp,

  and bring something

  to consciousness in me

  bring me the symphony’s invoices

  a shattered forehead

  in which a spear is hidden

  and the neck choked by amber

  Oh, you locked jowl!

  Am I language, that I bind you up with a fissure

  spin my body round

  are you language? To blow me up?

  Why in the depths of no progress is nothing moving?

  Give a signature to my bruised neck

  ascend a vein

  and make a leaden face

  that will shine on the ceiling;

  with a half-drunk tongue of intensity

  it cannot sleep

  the revolution has collapsed

  and for half a century love has been a monster

  Granaz Moussavi

  Born 1976

  Granaz Moussavi was born in Tehran; in 1997 she and her family emigrated to Australia. She has a postgraduate degree in film editing from Flinders University, Australia. Moussavi’s poetry has been widely translated into a number of languages; she is also a film-maker and has made a number of well-received films, including My Tehran for Sale (2008) and 1001 Nights (2006), a documentary on Iranian poets in exile.

  *

  The Blue Headscarf’s Words

  I could be wearing all the clouds in the world

  and they’d still throw a cloak over my shoulders

  so that I wouldn’t be naked

  here the moon shines in the dusk

  the hand that hits me

  doesn’t know

  that sometimes a minnow

  can fall in love with a whale

  there’s no point in their shouting at me

  they don’t know

  that I’ve become a fish now

  that your river’s gone over my head

  I don’t want to wear the world’s deserts

  or to breathe

 

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