The Mirror of My Heart

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The Mirror of My Heart Page 19

by Unknown


  on a planet that hasn’t yet been discovered

  even if they take the wind’s fingerprints

  they won’t discover the trace of your kiss

  We must go into the street

  although the cars pass between us and the sun

  we must go into the street

  all this sky won’t fit into the window

  I want to sunbathe

  in the southernmost part of your soul

  the ceiling light isn’t worth the pains of hell

  the one who draws the curtains

  doesn’t know

  always the sound of the person standing on the other side of the line

  tomorrow he’ll arrive

  whatever they want, it’s all right

  they’ll tear off the door’s hinges

  tonight I’ll come from the dusky moonlight

  and I’ll cut into pieces all the curtains and cloaks

  and leave them to make kites, and for moonlit nights

  they’ll rent a room in the world’s suburbs

  and I shall have gone

  I want to give my blouse to the sun

  *

  Strike! Seventy lashes

  so that I’ll become more of a woman

  beside the stones

  and my body will fill with pomegranates103

  I won’t repent

  “Stand aside! Halt!”

  they’ve been through my pockets

  and there’s no other thought there

  than the sun, that is sick of veils

  Sara Mohammadi-Ardehali

  Born 1976

  Sara Mohammadi-Ardehali was born and currently lives in Tehran, and has an MA degree in Sociology from Tehran’s Alameh Tabatabai University.

  *

  A Full-Time Position

  No man wants

  to fall in love with a woman

  who works in a circus

  one of those women who has to walk a tight-rope

  He falls in love with a woman

  who might fall at any moment

  and if she doesn’t fall

  thousands of people clap their hands

  to applaud her

  *

  Woman

  Everything is obvious

  at thirty-five

  without

  your having to be naked

  *

  The Smell of Blood

  I swim

  from this side to that

  I go underwater

  for as long as I can hold my breath

  I trail my fingers along the bottom of the pool

  suddenly

  the memory of you

  returns, swimming toward me like a shark

  *

  Difficult Evening

  My hand

  stretches toward the telephone

  it comes back again

  like a child to whom they’ve said

  the cakes on the table

  are for guests

  *

  Meeting

  Like a leopard

  he emerged

  from among the bushes

  with Genghis Khan’s smile on his lips

  his black eyes flickered

  he held out his hand

  the poets of Nayshapur

  the multi-colored silks of Balkh

  the granaries of Khorasan and Khwarazm104

  in me

  went up in flames

  and turned to smoke

  I shook his hand

  *

  Empire of Dust

  I forgot

  my body’s handwriting

  my shoulders’ calligraphy and the contour of my laughter

  I must be naked

  I’ll go beneath the sun

  beside the wind

  I went on a trip

  the Mediterranean laughed at me

  it said

  Why are you afraid of the water?

  The Persian empire has fallen

  we’ve agreed on summer

  come, with old Phoenician mariners

  we’ll go sailing

  *

  A complete mess

  Wearing comfortable slippers

  he gets going

  he picks up the half-open books under the bed

  he folds the scattered clothes

  he collects the pencils and cups

  he comes behind your head

  he hesitates

  then brings his lips close to the softness of your ear

  you sense the sound of his breath

  you turn round

  the room is empty

  it’s a complete mess

  *

  Confession

  I had a relationship with him

  I was alone

  and he was alone too

  we were both tired

  I of the earth

  he of the sky

  our rendezvous was at midnight

  he came to the window

  you won’t believe it

  he smiled at me

  he was very beautiful

  extraordinarily beautiful

  I remember

  it was the fourteenth night

  and

  he

  was complete, full

  Shabnam Azar

  Born 1977

  Shabnam Azar’s work as a journalist led to her having to leave Iran in 2009. She has a postgraduate degree in media arts from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, and has published four books of poetry in Iran and Germany.

  *

  Stop

  Emptier than an abandoned house

  emptier than the leftovers of a splendid party

  emptier than a door left half open

  a hand that has reached for something

  and is left in the air, waiting

  a rotted flag

  faded and worn

  old

  I look at the days that have gone

  at the faded colors of old photographs

  at a mouth

  that has not yet forgotten how to laugh

  no matter how strong

  the pillar

  the house finally collapses

  sounds

  finally end in silence

  and shadows

  return into things

  tomorrow

  breathes

  greedily

  and this old clock

  whose white face is hung in the room’s cold air,

  for all its life

  thinks of the silence between tick and tock

  *

  Free Fall

  Alone

  he ran on

  a few steps ahead of me

  before he fell

  on the road to freedom

  freedom is beautiful

  even

  when you’re in free fall

  toward death

  even

  when you grow cold

  lying in your own blood

  Bullets!

  dear bullets

  please

  go back to your shell casings

  and we too

  will go back to our homes

  Rosa Jamali

  Born 1977

  Born in Tabriz, Rosa Jamali has an MA in English Literature from Tehran University. As well as poetry, she has written a play, Shadows (2007), and has translated W. B. Yeats into Persian.

  *

  A shortcut to an unknown spot (a crime that I’ve revealed
)

  With your permission

  We’ll assess whether this unknown sign is correct

  the crime that I’ve revealed

  they’ve exiled me to an unknown spot

  and it’s no distance from being underground

  Speak, say something, confess!

  I came into the world on the day you stroked my shroud

  my constant entertainment was a dark loophole

  my evidence a page from my sister’s identity card

  they ascertain the strength of gravity the moment a stone

  doesn’t sink in water

  Speak, say something, confess!

  the crime that I’ve revealed

  The crime that I’ve revealed

  That’s great!

  I don’t know if it’s four o’clock or five

  if today’s Thursday or Friday

  if it’s October or November

  if it’s winter or autumn

  minutes are halted, forbidden

  I’m guilty of murdering someone

  it’s not the first time

  it’s not the last time

  it’s the thousandth time they’ve put me in prison

  I have thirty seconds

  for years my shadow has followed your shadow

  my hair is a tangled spider’s web

  there’s algae between my fingers

  I won’t look into your pupils anymore

  you’ve spilled cold milk on my bones

  you’ve shot a volley of bullets into my pupils

  for thirty-five days I’ve been in love with corpses

  though this is an inaccurate account

  That’s great!

  his eyeballs are cloudy with pneumonia

  my breasts feel crushed

  they give me a blind man’s stick

  and looking at the calendar is forbidden

  That’s great!

  A woman is screaming, vertical and horizontal, at eighty degrees on the clock from the welts the stick makes

  a woman is screaming round the clock

  a woman is screaming, a few seconds, a

  moment of surrender, it’s ninety degrees

  a woman is screaming and the gashes and a

  wall-clock, one hundred and eighty degrees

  a woman is screaming / it’s half past midnight /

  the circle’s complete

  it’s three hundred and sixty degrees

  A revolver’s diagonal shape on the wall

  the smell of blood’s sent me crazy

  Speak, say something, confess!

  it looks like bad weather’s coming

  the world is a short woman who’s been slashed down

  Speak, say something, confess!

  they’ve exiled me to an unknown spot

  a slab of rubble drops into water

  and it’s no distance from being underground

  a woman is screaming . . .

  a woman is screaming . . .

  a woman is screaming . . .

  Hengameh Hoveyda

  Born 1978

  Born in Tehran, Hengameh Hoveyda has a bachelor’s degree in Persian Literature; she currently lives in Paris, where she is pursuing a doctorate at the Sorbonne.

  *

  Loneliness

  Fold yourself in your embrace

  embrace yourself and sleep

  this is the only thing you have

  your hands

  if you don’t put your trust in loneliness

  like a scarecrow swaying back and forth in the wind

  your hands

  will become a nest for crows

  and they’ve stolen your eyes . . .

  *

  The Criminal

  They have exiled me in myself

  so far away

  that neither my voice reaches anyone else

  nor anyone else’s reaches me

  Fatemeh Shams

  Born 1983

  Born in Mashhad, Fatemeh Shams left Iran in 2006 and settled in England. She studied first at the Agha Khan University in London, and then at Oxford, where she was awarded a PhD in Iranian Studies. She has published two collections of poetry in Persian, and a selection of her poems has been translated into English. In 2012 she received the Zhaleh Esfahani poetry award in London for the best young Iranian poet. She is currently Assistant Professor of Modern Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

  *

  Never to fall asleep . . .

  Never to fall asleep, because of a nightmare’s fear

  To sit awake each night until the dawn is here

  Caught between waking and sleep, as if unsteady with drink,

  In the name of life to die, with blindness drawing near

  In futile empty love repeated endlessly

  In saying, “I love you, my dear! Do you love me?”

  In wanting things that reach their end but never start,

  In pointless work, in no work’s sour banality

  To have no memory, no border, and no place,

  To drift about in men’s and women’s cold embrace,

  To drag with you a suitcase and three hundred books

  To have, among all colors, a shroud’s conceal your face

  To tear my heart from those who wore a mask and all they mean

  From men whose inward being is a reeking foul latrine

  To tear my heart from that strange city of my childhoods

  Whose earth holds sorrow still that’s innocent and clean

  From endless hesitating, from not returning there,

  In waking dreams without you, in exile’s arms and air,

  In boundless longing for the things I’ll never see

  In “hope,” that lovely word whose absence brings despair

  Without a homeland, without love, in wild perplexity,

  Within this narrow cul-de-sac from which I can’t walk free

  To vomit you from me, and ah to ask you with my love

  “O wounded, worn-out country! Do you still think of me?”

  *

  W for War (3)

  In memory of Aziz and the children of war in Kobane105

  How hard it was to stay alive

  In the war, the bullets’ rain,

  When everywhere they looked

  Were death and darkness and pain

  They had to pack and leave

  And travel to who-knows-where

  To a geography unknown,

  That was anywhere but there

  Behind them their lost home

  Was black with ash, ahead

  A hard uneven road

  And the flood of those who fled

  His shoulders carried a child

  His arms were around another,

  Behind them ran a third

  Like a mound that dust-clouds smother

  Their mother was following them

  A mountain of silence and dread,

  Eye to eye with the war, tears flowed

  Like pomegranate juice, blood-red.

  Ah, but the war was brutal

  Destroying her hopes with fear,

  Stealing her children’s joy

  With its thuggish, violent sneer.

  Three children—one didn’t smile,

  Three children—one had a fever,

  They were homeless and silent now

  Like a poem unheard forever

  By the side of the road, bewildered

  By the kindness of the sun,

  Perhaps someone would come

  And see him there, someone . . .

  War came in the shape of a ma
n,

  Death came in the form of the sun

  His eyes were fixed on the sky, frozen

  Forever, and seeing no one

  And then he saw nothing forever,

  And forever now he kept

  His silence, and closed his infant eyes

  On the crimes around him, and slept.

  *

  Prosecution

  Pictures don’t lie

  I’ve grown old

  and I’ve forgotten the love I felt when I was twenty

  you’ve come too late

  paper’s grown expensive

  postmen have had enough

  planes mostly crash

  and no one else’s file will ever be closed

  *

  Roots

  Once I was a tree

  with black and white crows in my hair

  with upside-down roots

  the ground had set my body free,

  my body, my roots,

  roots that were the crows’ refuge

  once I was everything

  a dream filled with life in a year of famine.

  Fatemeh Ekhtesari

  Born 1986

  Fatemeh Ekhtesari was born in the town of Kashmar in the northeast of Iran. As a young women she trained as a midwife, but after enrolling at the University of Tehran she turned her attention to literature. Virtually from the beginning her writing attracted censorship and state condemnation. Her status as a poetic gadfly was confirmed when she took part in a poetry festival in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2013; on her return to Iran, she was arrested and tried for immoral behavior and blasphemy and was sentenced to ninety-nine lashes and eleven years’ imprisonment. She left Iran illegally and made her way to Scandinavia, where she now lives.

  *

  I was knocked up and made pregnant

  By a right-wing political bore

  When the dust had settled he’d left me

  As if I were a whore

  An artist signed my belly

  He was a real celebrity

  He took a selfie with my tears,

  Planted a kiss on my misery

  The lefties shouted, “Abort it!”

  Their hammer and sickle attacked me,

  The placards in their bloody hands

  Were claiming that they backed me

  The feminists gave me an essay106

  About what some big-shot has done

  Spit on his sex-obsessed mind

  Not a mind but a pond full of scum

  “Hey bitch, the world’s in an uproar . . .”

  My mom declares, “Your life’s ok,

  Call her ‘Nazanin Zahra,’

  But you’re a disgrace—Enough’s enough, I say!”

  I’m a painting, a ditch,

  The woman in each picture, more or less,

  Like a spot of blood in the toilet

 

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