The Mirror of My Heart

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by Unknown


  As Fate has always been, so it will be—

  Time is our friend, and then our enemy,

  It’s day, then night, its revolutions bring

  December’s snows to us, and then the spring.

  The caravan of life moves surely on

  And leaves us grieving for the time that’s gone;

  Born to unrest, caught in an evil snare,

  None can escape this world of harsh despair—

  Whether your state is good or bad, no force

  Will modify the world’s incessant course.

  My friend, there’s silk upon this merchant’s stall,

  At times . . . at times there’s burlap and that’s all!

  Polish the mirror of your soul, you must,56

  Scour it with knowledge of corrosive rust.

  Don’t be ungrateful; in the wilderness

  God fed the Jews, and pitied their distress.

  You read these books of wise theology

  And yet you hardly know your ABC!

  Why are you so afraid, Parvin? Just say

  The truth; truth’s not a thing to hide away.

  *

  Sorrow and Poverty

  A woman bent beside her spindle said,

  “From spinning you, I’ve white hairs on my head,

  My eyes grow dark, my poor back gives me trouble,

  It’s hard for me to see and I’m bent double,

  Clouds gather over me, they weep and say

  My winter’s here . . . That winter’s borne away

  My friends like falling leaves—I’m left alone,

  There’s nothing here that I can call my own.

  Charcoal and wood are things that I can’t pay for

  And they’re the only things I hope and pray for.

  Each little bird is snug now in its nest

  And even insects scuttle off to rest.

  Now the sun’s set, what light will there be for

  Those who must work at night because they’re poor?

  From darning tears and mending holes, blood seeps

  Beneath my nails, and it’s my heart that weeps.

  There’s not an unpatched part of what I wear,

  As one bit’s sewn, another patch will tear;

  My hands were trembling and there wasn’t light

  For me to thread my needle by last night,

  And then I smelled my neighbor’s meal, and crept

  Hungry to bed, and hungrily I slept.

  When I see clouds or rain, my heart beats fast,

  Wondering how long my leaky roof will last,

  With all the snow and mud how could I mend it?

  And I’m afraid that one more storm will end it.

  Instead of curtains when I wake I see

  The ceiling webs the spiders weave for me,

  And when I walk to see new flowers, I meet

  At every step with thorns that pierce my feet,

  I’ve seen such floods of awful things, believe me,

  And I’ve wept floods of tears for things that grieve me.”

  Why is it those with wealth and power ignore

  The dreadful sufferings of their country’s poor?

  Parvin, the wealthy have no sympathy

  For the impoverished and their misery—

  How many times is it that you’ve been told

  It’s useless to beat iron that’s grown cold?

  Zhaleh Esfahani

  1921–2007

  She was born in Esfahan. Despite her father’s disapproval, her mother insisted that she go to school; at first she attended a local elementary school run by British missionaries, and then a high school in Tehran. As a young woman, she became idealistically involved in leftist politics, which in Iran at that time were dominated by the Soviet Union. In 1943 she married a member of Iran’s Tudeh (communist) party; her husband was briefly imprisoned for his political activism, and on his release in 1947 the couple fled from Iran, moving first to Baku and later to Moscow. She stayed in the Soviet Union until the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, when she returned to Iran. Two years later, disillusioned with the policies of the Islamic Republic’s theocratic government, she moved to England, where she remained until her death. She wrote poetry throughout her life, from childhood until old age; much of it was political in nature, but she also had a strong lyric gift, and this is apparent in even her most ideological work.57

  *

  Forest and River58

  The forest cried out to the river:

  I wish I were like you

  Traveling day and night, with such sights to see,

  Down to the limpid, open sea

  A riverbed of shining water

  A restless eager soul

  A surging, turquoise-colored light

  Flowing forever

  And what am I?

  A captive caught in earth

  In eternal silence

  I’ll grow old

  I’ll turn yellow

  I’ll dry up

  I’ll be a handful of cold ashes

  Sooner or later

  The river shouted:

  Forest, you’re half awake

  I wish I were in your place

  That I knew such lucid, emerald peace

  On glittering moonlit nights,

  To be the mirror in which spring sees herself

  The spreading shade where lovers meet

  Your destiny’s to be renewed each year

  And mine’s to abscond from myself

  All I know is to run in confusion

  to run

  and run

  From all this migrating and journeying

  What do I get

  except futility and restlessness?

  Ah not for a moment is my soul ever at peace!

  No one knows

  another’s heart

  Who can say of a passer-by

  who he is or was?

  A man walks in shadow, asking himself under his breath,

  Who am I?

  River?

  Forest?

  Both together?

  Forest and river?

  Forest and river.

  *

  Ungrateful/Blasphemy59

  When I depart this wretched world, be sure

  To burn my corpse to ashes, and what’s more

  See that my ashes come to rest in water

  And scatter them at sea, not in a river.

  I want to sing together with the sea,

  One with its soul and its immensity,

  Sing songs that call up mighty storms, the crash

  Of tumbling waves, the lightning’s sudden flash,

  Songs of the ocean’s joy, its light flung wide,

  Songs brimful with its passion and its pride.

  When I depart this wretched world, be sure,

  O God, to vex and bother me no more,

  Since on this earth I’ve borne enough from You,

  Trapped here and made to suffer all You do.

  I’ve written this while on a moving train,

  As restless as the thoughts within my brain;

  I and my couplets, we’ll both carry on,

  Old-fashioned now—tomorrow we’ll be gone.

  When I depart this wretched world, be sure

  I’ll tell the chamberlain who guards hell’s door,

  “I’m just like fire, I’m heathen, you can’t turn me,

  I’m a poet, a poet—you’d better burn me;

  I didn’t want the world’s filth, fit for curses,

  I gave it something beautiful—my verses.”

  I’ve written this while on a moving trai
n

  To make sure nothing of it will remain.

  *

  Where Am I from, You Want to Know

  Where am I from, you want to know

  I’m a gypsy, one who’ll come and go

  Raised in pain and sorrow

  Look at a map of the world, the whole expanse,

  Cross all the countries’ borders at a glance

  It’s certain you won’t find a single country where

  There’s no one from my country there,

  Living hand to mouth

  My soul’s in turmoil and I fall asleep

  Moonlit nights; deep

  In the world of sleep

  I wander over endless boulders of my longing

  By asking where I’m from

  You’ve woken me from all

  That golden dream; I’ve fallen from the high roof of my longing

  To the foot of reality’s wall

  Where am I from, you want to know

  From a country that’s rich and poor

  From the green foothills of the Alborz60

  From the shores of the wonderful Zayandeh Rud River61

  And from Persepolis’s ancient palaces

  Where am I from, you want to know

  From a land of poetry and love and the sun

  From a country of conflict and hope and oppression

  From the barricades of revolution’s victims

  My eyes are burning, thirstily waiting—

  Now do you know

  Where I’m from?

  *

  Return

  The alleyway’s the same alleyway, the city the same city,

  the mountain that same mountainside, the stream that same stream,

  the trees in the same place, Zendeh Rud in the same place,62

  the beautiful domes, the minarets and their summits,

  the eternal epic as it was

  On the walls and doors a thousand slogans

  the city’s been busy since the revolution

  the city of artists, industry, and warfare

  a city preoccupied with poverty and great wealth

  the smiling of turquoise, the dancing of gold

  on the shop doors, in the hubbub of the bazaar

  fresher than gardens on spring mornings

  carpets that show gardens, cloth printed from wood-blocks

  so much fruit at the side of the street, in the square

  the wide, staring eyes of hungry children

  the heart-wrenching scent of newly baked bread

  the Zayandeh Rud’s bank with its press of young people

  here’s news from the front, here’s news of the war63

  Oh to wipe out that war’s spirit and name

  cursed by so much blood and destruction

  once again lamps will be lit commemorating the fallen

  in windows, in shops, at the roadside

  on one side this ruinous war’s refugees

  on the other men committed to war

  on their way to defend the homeland, rifles sloped on shoulders,

  determined and stubborn and angry and silent

  The layout of a city filled with magic, the glitter of moonlight

  the river the same river, and the river water not that water

  the city’s sweet young girl, where has she gone?

  has she burned, become smoke, the smoke gone into air?

  or like a bird has she flown the nest,

  gone, never to see the nest again?

  or after long years of flight

  has she now returned to her nest

  I wander the streets, go from house to house

  looking everywhere for the one I lost

  they say she was the one who made our hearts happy,

  the shadow of the young girl is everywhere

  on that mountain top, sometimes by this river,

  she’s running, scurrying here and there,

  on she goes, looking for tomorrow

  Sweet young girl of this city, where are you?

  appear now, we’re two friends, we know each other

  we’re companions, with the same soul, the same voice

  your red cheeks have become my wrinkled face

  my life and yours devoted to our country

  oh how happy and proud I am that we have done this!

  In the time of plunder and the crown, the sly nightwatchman

  wanted me to return and be like a slave64

  in my country to be wretched and humble

  I didn’t listen to his dangerous words

  so that I wouldn’t turn to smoke, the smoke from his flames

  the ache for my country remained, and my conscience’s honor,

  clear-sighted, with a heart filled with longing—

  though all my life was spent harried by traveling

  I’ll never say my life’s gone by in vain

  So, off you go my sweet girl, and may God keep you!

  who am I saying “go” to?

  it’s a long time since you went

  and never returned

  Oh youth, the young shoot blossoming

  in my sons who are my fruit,

  you’ve gone, and I go; what’s there to be sorry for?

  all these young souls are as my soul was

  this is how it was since time began

  the young shoot giving blossoms and fruit

  Once again myself, and Esfahan’s clear sky

  all these shining eyes filled with anticipation

  this was my wish, to see my friends and my homeland

  I’m grateful that I stayed alive, that I’ve seen them,

  that my wish was fulfilled, even though it’s so late.

  Here is the beginning of my being and of my poetry

  the growing and blossoming

  of my sapling of hope.

  Simin Behbahani

  1927–2014

  Simin Behbahani’s father was a poet, journalist, and newspaper editor, and her mother was a teacher of French; she too worked as a newspaper editor for a while, and both parents were active in patriotic and reformist politics. As a child, Behbahani grew up in a household steeped in both literature and political activism, and also one in which the value of women’s intellectual lives was taken for granted. Given this background it is not surprising that she began to write poetry while still very young, and that she remained involved in reformist politics throughout her life. Her poetry uses both traditional and modernist techniques, and covers a very wide range of subjects, from the intimately personal to poems on social questions of general concern. She is regarded as one of the greatest of Iran’s twentieth-century writers and was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. She was twice married and had two sons. Toward the end of her life, she fell foul of the Islamic Republic’s government and was forcibly prevented from leaving Iran in 2010, when she was eighty-two and almost blind. She died five years later, in Tehran, and many thousands of mourners are said to have attended her funeral.65

  *

  Prostitute’s Song

  Give me that pot of rouge

  I’ll put some color on my colorless flesh

  Give me that cream, I’ll make my careworn

  Wrinkled face look young and fresh

  Give me that musky perfume and I’ll scent

  My hair spread on my shoulders; pass me

  My tight dress, so that in their arms

  They’ll tightly clasp me.

  Give me that chiffon whose see-through sheen

  Doubles the lure of nakedness—

  That goads their lust and makes them want

  My body and my breasts

  Give
me that wine glass, so I’ll get drunk

  And laugh at my dark fate a while

  So that my worn, unhappy face will show

  A cheerfully deceiving smile

  Oh God, last night’s companion

  Was so exasperating, such a loser . . . but I

  Could only say when he asked how it was,

  “I’ve never met a more attractive guy”

  As for that “husband” of the night before

  The one who made me ill

  If he’d paid me a hundred times what he paid

  Pain would have made me sicker still.

  Too many people round me, and I’ve no one—

  No friends to be supportive, or to care,

  How they protest how much they care for me—

  A moment later they’re not there

  No husband who would share my pillow

  Whose faithful hand would guard me, who’d be kind,

  No child, no dearest one who would

  Scour clean this rust that tarnishes my mind

  And oh, who’s that, who’s banging there?

  My “husband” for tonight is at the door;

  O sorrow, leave my heart alone; it’s time

  To give him what he’s come here for.

  O lips, my lips that sell deceit,

  Veil your sad secrets now and smile,

  And so they’ll leave a few more coins for me

  Kiss them, flirt with them, use all your guile . . .

  *

  Dancing Girl

  The dancing girl was about to dance—from the heart

  Of the bar there erupted a deafening shout;

  She shook her blonde hair free, her pleated skirt twirled,

  From the hearts of the drunks a wild cry burst out

  The sound of the music, the clinking of glasses,

  Bursts of laughter and yelling, all mixed in confusion—

  Twisting and turning, the curved wave of her body,

  Enticing the audience to fiery abandon

  A trembling of joy in the flesh of the drunks

  As her bared breasts like ivory started to shake,

  The glitter of sequins on the silk of her skirt

  Was like sunlight at dawn on the waves of a lake

  Her waist like a snake that twisted with hunger

  As slippery as mercury, as smooth and as bright,

  A glimpse of her thigh through the slit in her skirt

  Was a flash of the moon from the depths of the night

  The dance came to an end, the wine-lovers clapped,

  They tore at their clothes till they hung there in strands,

  They threw flowers on the head of the flower that had opened,

 

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