Dardedel

by Manoucher Parvin

  As it endures Modernity’s endless thrusts.

  He wipes his teary eyes and with a somber voice asks Pirooz,

  “Has modernity poisoned poetry, too, professor?”

  Pirooz shrugs, and says: “Not yet.”

  As they drink and reach for pears and apples,

  A thunderbolt blows the clouds apart, unveiling a rainbow.

  Freed, the rainbow divides in two

  And flaps like the joined wings of a bird—until it is a bird.

  As the three Persians gaze in amazement, the bird swoops down,

  Perching on Rumi’s uplifted knee.

  A halo surrounds the bird’s feathery head,

  As if it were a saint with colored wings.

  “I am the Poem of Poems,” declares the bird.

  “Like the King of Kings!

  I am real but not real,

  Mythical yet I can appear with bones and flesh.

  I am like the Persian Simorgh who could cure all diseases.

  I am like the Egyptian phoenix, death is a new life for me.

  I am like the Hoopoe bird of Attar who leads the many,

  To the unity of Onemany.

  I am the summation of human experiences

  And the expression of human aspirations.

  I will speak for poems—all poems in all tongues.

  And I will speak for poets and poetry, too!

  Yes, I am the Poem of Poems:

  My ear is the wind—I hear everything.

  My eye is the sun—I see everything.

  My tongue is history—it sings the same in different languages.

  My body is the earth—I hold everyone in my arms.

  My veins are rivers—nourishing all who come to me.

  My heart is the palpitating sea—kissing shore after shore,

  As the naked moon walks sexily across the deep blue sky.

  My spirit is the fire that delights—not the fire that burns.

  Time is my ship and the universe is my ocean.

  My home is where I happen to be.

  Words are my neurons, and

  Alas, sentences are my prison!”

  Pirooz puts down his cup of wine.

  “Are you real or are we really drunk?”

  The Poem of Poems laughs and says:

  “Oh, you are drunk enough, but I am also real enough.

  To those I favor I can be seen and heard, even touched.

  My fragrance rises from Hafez’s odes,

  Wherever he plants a narcissus or a rose.

  I am a painting that sings music composed of words,

  I am the music composed of words, not notes.

  I am meaning with rhythm and rhythm with meaning.

  I am a dardedel cuddled by the souls,

  The philosophy that tangos with psychology.

  I am sociology without the jibber-jabber,

  A story written by stars on the empty blue.”

  “My tail is rhyme,” the bird tells the three Persians.

  “It sweeps the dictionary with wide-open eyes!

  I am the love child and the hate child,

  Of both the real and imagined worlds.

  I can be a lunatic, nasty, erotic,

  Moody, witty, silly, obscene, profane, lovely, kindly, and wise,

  Even informative, even revolutionary,

  All depending, all depending.

  I remember the future, I imagine the past,

  I think in a present that has no bounds.

  I am the widow of dead dreams.

  Like an empty oven, I can be very sad,

  I can be happy as a wedding,

  As hopeful and helpful and bright as a lighthouse,

  When dark tiger waves threaten little lost boats.”

  When at last the bird stops, Rumi asks: “Poem of Poems,

  You have told us who and what you are,

  But where do you come from?”

  “Mowlana,” coos the bird, as a lover might,

  “Who knows how or why or when my beginning began?

  I was born before history, sometime during the ancient twilight,

  When baby language was wet—no diaper yet—and

  Cried out for the mother-god’s milk!

  Perhaps I was the rhythmic string of magic words

  Sung to induce the Yam Yam tree to bear more Yam Yams!

  Perhaps I was the first love song of Man

  When he tried to imitate the love songs of birds.

  Or perhaps I was a primitive prayer,

  Chanted to thwart thunderbolts from forests and caves,

  To ward off fear in the heart of human existence.

  No wonder most gods speak with rhythm and even rhyme!

  It is all in the Holy Books—read, read, and read!”

  The bird now tells them how, little by little, poems

  Became songs to tell others how one existed, thought, or felt,

  How little by little, as man established moral and aesthetic order,

  Political, social, and cultural order,

  Man also established Poetic Order.

  Pirooz could not agree more, saying:

  “In every language, language was turned into a sword—

  To intimidate! To chain! To exploit!”

  The bird continues:

  “As time passed, my feathers were chained

  By grammar, by syntax, by uneasy spellings,

  By transfixed rules of rhyme, rhythm and meter,

  And by the militaristic way words were lined up on paper,

  Even by Hafez, even by Rumi, as he himself complained.

  Everything became as rigid as death.

  I was no longer allowed to pick whatever seed—

  Whatever word, I mean—that I desired.

  The dictionaries that were imprinted

  In the minds of the ancients were mutilated!

  Some words were banished, some set on fire!

  Ideas and emotions uncomfortable to kings became taboo.

  Man could not even mention his own private parts in poems

  Without fear of having them cut off!

  I was put in a cage and the door was slammed shut.

  My eyes were filled with sand, my ears with molten lead,

  And my beak sewed tight with threads of iron.

  As the centuries went by chains were added to my chains,

  And my cage was put in a cage.

  Vicious dogs of tradition encircled me, round and round,

  Preventing not only escape,

  But even the thought of escape.”

  “How true,” Hafez interrupts.

  “Often I had to dissimulate, or compromise,

  Or compose in voices mysterious even to myself.

  Oh, those useless words I used to rhyme, just to rhyme,

  Hound me even in death!”

  Rumi agrees: “I often complained in my own poems

  Of such rigid rules, called Aruz in Persian.

  Still, I obeyed Aruz as if it were the word of God!”

  The Poem of Poems goes on:

  “Poetry became more and more rigid.

  In Persia the themes of Hafez were used and re-used forever.

  Until even my prison guards were poets!”

  The magnificent bird lifts its head and opens its beak,

  As if breathing in inspiration.

  “Then modernity was born—Ooooh! What a difficult birth!

  New science and technology expanded human possibilities,

  Opening eyes, heightening human consciousness,

  Causing revolutions in minds, modes of learning, working and living.

  People took power, banishing kings and lords,

  Restricting the reach of the clergy,

  Liberating slaves, serfs, and women,

  Even I was liberated—to fly free and sing in verses free,

  From China to Persia, from Africa to America,

  From Europe to Everywhere!

  Oh, I’ve kept a few of my
chains, just to remember—see!”

  The Poem of Poems takes to the air, showing the three Persians

  The short silver links dangling from its feather tips.

  As it dances in the wind the remaining chains collide,

  Ching ching ching.

  And the bird sings: “The chains are torn, I am free verse at last!

  Swing bird, swing—no strings, no kings, no slings.

  The world has opened and is open wide.

  So choose how you wish to sing, and ding and fling!

  Free at last! Free at last! Poems and poets are free at last!

  To be what they wish to be, to become what they wish to become.”

  The bird soars higher, twisting its chains around its breast,

  Ching ching ching.

  It sings so loud the Persians fear all of Manhattan will hear,

  And rush to the river to see if elephants are dancing on the river:

  The Poem of Poems sings: “Rejoice and rejoice,

  No word is banished or forced to march like soldiers on the page.

  Pages are no longer prison cells or cemetery rows.

  Pages are now floors for liberated words and ideas to dance upon,

  So be free and happy and dance and dance.

  No rhyme, no rhythm, no meter,

  No Peter or Paul intervening.

  Rejoice and rejoice for language and languages,

  For dictionaries and thesauruses

  As big as dinosaurases,

  As wide open as imaginations.

  Rejoice for the literary, the spoken, the super-cool colloquial.

  The white tongue, the black tongue, all tongues, all tongues.

  Rejoice and rejoice, for unchained forms and contents,

  Expressions, metaphors, and meanings.

  The demeaned word is not the forbidden word.

  Poets are no longer guards guarding themselves.

  Poets now are seers, chroniclers, revered revolutionaries,

  Reveling in the freedom of free verse.

  Rejoice and rejoice for liberty has invited souls of every shape and color

  To come around and compose whatever poems they wish,

  However they wish.

  Classicism, romanticism, symbolism, modernism, postmodernism,

  All isms, all isms, all isms,

  Have come alive like candlelight through pretty prisms,

  To enlighten the path and frighten the shadows away.

  Rejoice and rejoice for poetry of fact and investigative poetry,

  For all have come to my liberty party,

  And despite their differences

  All are having the time of their lives:

  ‘Another cup of liberty tea, good friend?’

  ‘Of course, yes of course, yes of course!’”

  Now the bird swoops low, landing square on Rumi’s head,

  Lamenting: “But soon the rejoicing was over.

  There was no more tea or thunderlaughs,

  No chinging or changing or chunging.

  Poets, it seems, wanted even more freedom!

  They wanted to crash through the final obstacles,

  To touch the earliest reality where only pictures existed.”

  Rumi, baffled, rolls his eyes skyward,

  Trying to see the mysterious bird through his white bushy eyebrows.

  “Poetry without words? That is like trying to whistle without lips,

  Or dance without feet!”

  The Poem of Poems digs his toes into the Mowlana’s scalp,

  Soliciting an unpoetic Ouch!

  Then it continues: “The poets’ new grief was that

  The world of words was tiny when compared

  To the immense inner world of imagination,

  And the limitless outer world of reality.

  So much of both worlds was still unobserved and unworded!

  Even the world of the unconscious, the very womb of creativity,

  Was left unconscious!”

  Hafez, fearing the sharp-toed bird will settle on his head next,

  Shrinks his neck and mumbles,

  “How ironic, Poem of Poems, you have put into words

  Something I felt all my mortal life!”

  The bird punishes Hafez’s interruption

  With another dig at Rumi’s head,

  Which makes Pirooz laugh and spit his wine.

  The bird sighs and goes on:

  “The language that once distinguished man from animals

  Was now a barrier to the creative self-realization of man.

  So a poet complained: ‘Language thinks for me,

  Instead of me thinking for me!’

  And the poet was right!

  Language was invented for practical matters,

  Like hunting and gathering and making fire.

  It was never meant to be precise or attend to the soul.

  Words are abstract! Words are fuzzy!

  To describe the sky man could only say blue.

  To describe a poppy man could only say red.

  Yes, as liquid as man’s language was,

  It could never describe all the shades of all the colors,

  All sounds, fragrances, tastes, or soft touches.

  So poets used symbols—drawings, photographs, numbers—

  To describe a face, a smile, a mood, a melody,

  A situation, an autumn, or a mango,

  More precisely than any word or words could do.

  They called this poetry concrete poetry, saying,

  ‘If words can picture a scene, then surely pictures can picture words.’

  And it was not just the old taboo subjects discussed,

  But new subjects that never existed,

  Not in ancient times nor even ten seconds ago!

  The coming of computers stimulated cyberpoets,

  Whose poems, while easy to look at

  Are nearly impossible to describe or discern.”

  Rumi not only hears the bird’s words, but feels its passion:

  “Show me what you mean, Poem of Poems,

  So that I will know what you mean.”

  This time the bird does not dig its toes into the poet’s head,

  But bends its neck and gently kisses his brow.

  “As you wish, Mowlana!”

  It stands tall and puffs its breast.

  From its parting beak a beam of light pierces the sky,

  Turning a black cloud white, displaying a poem already written:

  Life is a many sum game

  Sometime it adds up—sometimes it doesn’t

  Poker is a zero sum game

  What I lose is what you win

  Love is a positive sum game

  A kiss for you is a kiss for me

  War is a negative sum game

  The loser loses and the winner loses

  Now tell me who wants to play

  Which game and why?

  The three Persians applaud and plead, “More! More! More!”

  Until a new poem appears:

  Man,

  Are you watching watches

  Or are watches watching you?

  Man,

  Did you make the machine

  Or is the machine making you?

  Man,

  Do you feel the termites of greed

  Chewing at your body and soul?

  Man,

  Just who’s on watch here?

  You or something bigger than you?

  Man,

  Wake up before you can never wake up

  Man.

  When the Persians want more,

  The Poem of Poem opens his beak as wide as it will go,

  And boldly flashes across the silver cloud:

  E=mc2

  While Hafez gasps, and Rumi scratches his head,

  Pirooz claps his hands and cheers.

  He is enchanted that the Poem of Poems has chosen

  This famous formula as a poem.

  He lifts his arms to t
he poem and tells them,

  “It is the most concise description of nature ever written.”

  “That is quite a reputation for such a tiny poem to shoulder,” says Rumi.

  “Tell us, professor, can you translate it for us?”

  Pirooz nods and promises to try:

  “The energy within a mass equals the same mass,

  Times the speed of light

  Times the speed of light …

  In other words, a very small thing can make a lot of heat.”

  “Ahhhh!” says Hafez. “Who wrote this marvelous poem?”

  Answers Pirooz: “His name was Einstein and

  He composed the poem thinking he was composing science.

  In the modern world there are many poets

  Unaware that they are poets.”

  Though as full of wine as Rumi and Hafez,

  Pirooz cannot easily accept the presence of a talking bird

  Flashing poems on the clouds, as if its beak was a movie projector.

  “What exactly is your mission?” he asks.

  The Poem of Poems hops off Rumi’s head

  And into Pirooz’s surprised arms,

  Singing as quietly as a sparrow might:

  “To make pain more bearable, Pirooz Jaan,

  To bridge the divide between me and you, us and them.

  I am a hand reaching for the unreachable.

  I am a duration between two vast waitings:

  Waiting for birth and waiting for death.

  I glue people, times, and places together.

  I am all poems together.

  Poets did compose me, but I did compose poets, too,

  For poets now must drink from my breast

  Before they can compose!”

  “Drink from your breast?” Pirooz asks with a sly smile.

  “You are a bird! Birds don’t have milk!”

  The Poem of Poems turns its head sideways,

  The way birds do, and winking a big bird eye, says,

  “Professor! If I am not allowed to wax poetically, then who is?”

  The three Persians’ laughter is suddenly muffled

  By a thunderous flapping of wings as

  The bird leaps from Pirooz’s arms.

  Now hovering just out of his reach, it says,

  “My mission is to clarify and verify the attributes of existence,

  Distinguishing beauty from ugliness,

  In all their respective shades and disguises.

  My mission is to glorify truth and love and peace,

  To purify the human soul.

  My mission is to cry out, to defy,

  Injustice and prejudice,

  To shatter the chains that restrict imagination and creation.

  My mission is to induce smiles, understandings, and dreams.

  I magnify! I mystify! I unify!

  I satisfy deep longings!

  I am you and you are me!”