Dardedel

by Manoucher Parvin

  The poem of Poems begins to flap furiously,

  Chains colliding, ching ching ching.

  Even as it fights to break free of gravity, it sings:

  “I am a bundle of contradictions in flight!

  When poems collide within me, cultures collide like sperm and egg,

  And a new unexpected understanding is conceived.

  I enlist all senses! I summon all souls!

  I say the unsayable! I soar as high as I wish!”

  The Poem of Poems is suddenly gone

  And the river bank washed with the shadow of a man.

  The three Persians turn to find a policeman tapping his nightstick.

  “This is no place for a picnic,” he warns. “Move along, move along.”

  And so they head home to Pirooz’s apartment,

  Stunned and astonished by the magic of the day.

  Rumi and Pirooz discuss the crazy traffic,

  How so many people can be going in different directions all at once.

  But Hafez does not join in, cannot join in.

  He is thinking of Mitra,

  How the effervescent Poem of Poems reminded him of her,

  How in two lives, and one long death in between,

  He has never missed anything as he now misses his Mitra Jaan.

  9 There’s No Place Like Home

  Hafez is back at Pirooz’s window

  Watching the park police chase other people away.

  “How far has mankind fallen,” he moans,

  “That picnics are illegal?”

  Explains Pirooz with a chuckle,

  “Picnics are still legal, Hafez Jaan.

  But night is falling,

  And the night brings out people who do illegal things.

  The policeman was only protecting us.”

  Hafez does not understand:

  “Then the policeman should have guarded us until

  Our wine was gone and our basket empty.

  And then walked us home.”

  While Pirooz and Rumi play a game of chess,

  Hafez continues to gaze from the window,

  Seeing the city’s skyline as a battlefield,

  New York and God warring,

  One for light,

  One for night.

  “New York shelters all but is home to none,” he says.

  “Nevertheless, I did adopt New York,” answers Pirooz,

  One check away from mating the Mowlana.

  “And New York did adopt me.

  Just like you and the city of Shiraz adopted each other, Hafez!

  Though I curse my fate, and sometimes delude myself,

  The truth is that this city and I are family now—no matter what.”

  Hafez turns from the window. “Tell me, professor,

  “Just how did you and this city come to adopt each other?”

  Pirooz answers this way: “When a school boy in Teheran,

  I could not watch a despot and not cry foul.

  But I feared arrest and torture, so

  For safety I ran far away from Iran.

  Then theocratic rule came to my homeland,

  With clergymen proclaiming the ultimate Truth.

  The mullahs, it seemed, loved the dead, hated the living,

  Declaring the Day of Judgment before God was ready.

  They banished whoever claimed:

  ‘I see, I hear, I think, and choose to reject

  All that is false, immoral and ugly.’

  To scrub scriptures of intolerance you have to scrub

  Religions out of minds.”

  Pirooz waves off playing a second game.

  “Anyway, here I am in New York,

  Free of Iran’s despots and mullahs,

  Exasperated by America claiming to be more than it is,

  While claiming others are worse than they are.”

  Seeing that his guests are saddened by his sadness,

  Pirooz puts on a grin and asks: “Tell me, my prickly friends,

  Was it your own decision to come alive in America?

  You could have counted stars in the salty desert of Dasht-e Kavir

  Just as well as in the Sonora—is it not the same sky?”

  Hafez replies: “When God granted us our wish to return to life,

  So we could count the stars and see the vastness of His creation,

  Our first choice was indeed Dasht-e Kavir.

  But as we made our way toward Heaven’s gilded gates,

  We met so many Persians coming the other way,

  Passing into death from life.

  They told us what you have told us, Pirooz Jaan,

  How the mullahs cursed music, dance, wine, chess, beauty, happiness,

  Bashing women back into dark veils and dark times,

  Forcing everyone to mourn and mourn for the ancient martyrs.

  Though free from pain or repression ourselves,

  We still could not bear to witness such tragedies,

  To hear the chants and the screams

  Wafting across the salty sand as we tried to count.

  So, like so many living Persians today,

  We migrated to America, to the clear skies of Arizona.

  How tragic it is, Pirooz Jaan, that so many Persians,

  Both dead and living, are in Diaspora—

  Not because of the foreign occupation of Iran,

  But because of the clergy’s occupation of Iran.”

  Rumi, in the kitchen,

  Opening and closing the refrigerator door,

  Trying to see if the light inside goes out when the door closes,

  Or stays lit to warm the cold food,

  Now joins the conversation,

  His face going bright and dark, bright and dark

  As he works the refrigerator door:

  “But even from the Sonora, disguised as saguaros,

  We could not escape the pain and tumult of our countrymen.

  “But feel no sorrow for us, Pirooz Jaan.

  Meeting you in the desert has proven most serendipitous.

  We saved you from you while doing some sightseeing on the side.”

  Hafez spins dervishly: “And don’t forget about my Mitra!

  Finding her in my taxi is the most serendipitous of all!”

  Rumi gives up and joins the others.

  The refrigerator is simply too fast for him.

  “Hafez running after Mitra with his taxi

  Reminds me of something I wrote ages ago:

  Intoxicated by love and impelled by desire,

  Last night I was scurrying in bewilderment

  In every direction.”

  Pirooz looks at his watch and proclaims:

  “The day that was to be nothing,

  Is turning out to be really something.

  Shall we dardedel a little, and make it last forever?”

  Rumi and Hafez settle on Pirooz’s blue satin couch.

  (Blue is the favorite color of Persians:

  The color of the most precious stones,

  The color of tiles in the little fish pools,

  The indescribable blue of holy inscriptions

  In the great mosques.)

  Pirooz puts on a CD and smiles

  As the magic notes of Lotfi’s’ tar revitalizes his heart.

  He sits across from the two poets,

  In his favorite saffron-yellow chair.

  On the glass-top table between them

  Rests a crystal vase of red roses,

  A bronze dish piled high with pistachios,

  A tall bottle of purple wine

  And a candle as green as a rice stalk.

  Rumi reaches for a handful of the nuts,

  Their shells split like the mouths of tiny clams.

  “These modern American pistachios taste almost as good

  As the ancient pistachios I ate as a boy,” he says.

  His voice is so filled with joy, that it seems to Pirooz

  He is singing the lyric
s Lotfi always intended.

  “They are grown in America,” Pirooz says,

  “By growers from Persia.

  Their taste has an accent, like Persian art, Persian words,

  Persian feelings, and Persian thoughts in America.

  Like me and you, these pistachios live in Diaspora!

  But they are damn good, aren’t they?

  Just like your poems, Mowlana!

  Your poems are deformed by translation, true,

  And accented by foreign minds, true,

  But they are still damn good and true!

  They pour goodness into the heart and ethos of America.

  The soul of Persia nourishes the soul of America.

  The souls fuse while the rulers refuse!”

  “By the way, Pirooz,” Rumi says as he munches,

  That strange bird, that Poem of Poems,

  Flew off without telling us about the poetry of Iran.

  Can you fill us in?”

  Pirooz is astonished. “But don’t you know this already?”

  Rumi is astonished that Pirooz is astonished.

  “One dies with what one knows.

  And in death one learns no more

  About the world left behind—

  Unless God grants you a reprieve and

  Sends you back to learn what is new.

  Now speak to us of poetry, Pirooz Jaan.”

  “I am not a poetry expert,” Pirooz cautions.

  The wine in Hafez’s belly swirls as he laughs.

  “Birds are not poetry experts either!

  You do read Persian poetry, do you not, Pirooz?”

  Pirooz is giddy with exhilaration that fate

  Is allowing him to lecture these two immortal poets

  About the poets they themselves spawned,

  As if they were two eager freshmen with empty heads.

  “Yes—every night I read Persian poetry!

  They are my wine, my warm glass of milk,

  My home away from home.”

  Now he pulls himself from his chair and advances

  Dizzily to his book shelves.

  He fills his arms and returns to his chair and his glass of wine.

  He thumbs excitedly through one of his books.

  “I will read you a few samples, as examples

  Of modern Persian poetry.”

  Pirooz opens one of his books,

  And with the help of the spittle on his finger,

  Finds the page he wants.

  “This is a poem by Yushij,

  Considered the father of modern Persian verse.

  He shattered the old rigid themes and reformed the form

  By untying the knots of rhyme and introducing new meter.

  ‘O people,

  Who are giddy

  And giggling on the seaside.

  Look, someone is drowning,

  Gasping for air, fighting for life—

  In the wolfish, dark waves

  Of the heavy seas

  When you are drunk

  With delusions of victories.…’”

  Pirooz finds another page in the same book.

  “Shamlu, a disciple of Yushij,

  Was an indefatigable poet and fighter for freedom.

  A mere nineteen years old, he was a political prisoner

  When his father asked him to write

  A letter of remorse to the authorities to secure his release.

  This is part of his poem, called ‘Letter’:

  ‘O father,

  Do you ask me to be a coward,

  To repent and bow to the enemy,

  To choose deceit over truth—

  To shackle my soul

  Just to unshackle my body?

  You take yourself to safety, father,

  And I take myself

  To the battlefield—to danger!’”

  Hafez finds a tear meandering down his cheek

  And flicks it away, saying in a whisper,

  “This Shamlu is very brave.”

  Pirooz, nodding, finds yet another page.

  “Shamlu criticizes the poetry of the past

  For not being poetry for the people.

  Listen to this one, it is called ‘Poetry Which Is Life’:

  ‘Today poems are the

  Weapons of the masses,

  For poets are

  Trees in the forests

  Of the masses,

  And not jasmine, or,

  Hyacinth blossoming in

  Someone’s flower garden.’”

  Pirooz now reads bits and pieces of Shamlu’s poems,

  Revealing with his enthusiasm

  His love and awe for the poet’s way with words,

  And his way with courage.

  “Just listen to this—it is called ‘Aida in the Mirror’:

  ‘Delicate as poems

  Your lips twirl the most

  Hedonistic kiss

  Into such unheard coyness,

  Apt to transmute

  The burrowing beast

  Into a human!’

  “And this:

  Your body is a melody,

  And my body is the lyric

  That locks into yours

  To make a song

  Of palpitating continuity!’”

  “And listen to this from

  ‘The Rain’s Travelogue’:

  ‘The last words

  Of a raindrop were:

  Filthy is the earth!’”

  Rumi and Hafez beg Pirooz to continue,

  Even though the wine has turned his lips into rubber,

  And the black sky outside has divided his breath into yawns.

  Says Pirooz: “Then came the young woman Farrokhzad,

  Who, like her poems, never grew old.

  She was caught between tradition and modernity,

  And trapped in a loveless marriage,

  The fate of so many Eastern women,

  The wedding ring their master’s chain.

  Forced to choose between her son and her lover,

  She complains in a poem called ‘Sin’:

  ‘You, my love, are the sky—

  Luminous and pure

  I am a bird captured in a trap.

  O sky, what if I try to fly

  One day away from this

  Prison—stilled, cold, and stern.

  What am I to tell

  The tearful eyes of my child:

  That I am a captive bird

  [That must flee]

  So forget about me!’

  “She wishes her lover who is not her husband to take her

  From the city of sorrow to the zenith of passion.

  And once the forbidden love is consummated, she confesses:

  ‘Yes, I have sinned

  A titillating sin

  In his enflamed embrace

  Devoured in his arms

  I have sinned.

  Inside his unforgettable arms

  Sizzling like a red rod

  I have sinned!’

  Hafez takes the book from Pirooz.

  “Do not put this one away, professor.

  I must read it to my Mitra!”

  Pirooz now tells them of Sepehri.

  “He was a poet and painter of extraordinary sensitivity,

  Who journeyed far away to the Far East

  And drank from the spirit of

  Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.

  In a long masterpiece called ‘The Sound of Water’s Footsteps’

  He speaks of his observations:

  ‘I saw the people

  I saw the cities

  The plains and the mountains.

  I saw the earth and the water,

  The light and the darkness,

  And saw the plants in the light

  And the plants in the dark

  And animals in the light

  And animals in the dark.

  I saw humans in the light

  And humans in the dark.

&n
bsp; I saw, I saw …

  That the wings of life

  Are as widespread as death

  That life can leap

  As high as love

  That life is not a thing

  To be placed on the shelf of routine,

  And be forgotten by you and me!

  We,

  Must wash our eyes clean

  Must see the world in a different light

  Must bathe the words

  Must close the umbrella

  Must go under the rainfall

  Must take the memories,

  And the thoughts

  Under the rainfall.

  All must stand together

  Under the rainfall,

  Must seek love under the rainfall,

  Must play, write, talk

  And plant lilies under the rainfall.

  Life is being soaked again and again.

  Life is splashing around

  In the pool of the present.’

  Pirooz smiles: “Now here are a few lines

  by my exiled friend, Esma’il Kho’i.

  It is called ‘My Home In A Suitcase.’

  ‘Where is my home?

  For what am I homesick?

  I ask

  myself

  Now and then

  And who is my friend

  Whom am I longing for?

  ‘Your message is ringing in my ears still:

  You’re no longer safe at home!

  And your advice:

  For God’s sake hurry, depart!

  ‘What have I done?

  Except listen to your advice

  And consequently now

  Fallen into the abyss of silence

  And neglect.’

  Pirooz reads more and more until he sees Rumi’s yawn

  Spread to the lips of Hafez.

  He smiles apologetically, and says:

  “I know you are tired and hundreds

  Of wonderful poets’ poems must be reviewed to get the whole story.

  But I will end with the ending of a poem called ‘Loving,’

  By my friend and star, Naderpour:

  ‘O beloved afar

  Now that a world

  Separates us

  Could I see you

  In my dreams?

  Or like a shadow lay

  Beside you in my awakenings?

  Would I

  In the astonishing moment

  Of unity with you,

  Once more whisper your sweet name

  In your ears?

  I wish that in the darkness of the night that

  Took you away from me

  I would have perished

  In the fragrance of your exotic hair

  I wish that on the same night

  From your side

  I would have been

  Whirled to the side

  Of annihilation!’”

  Rumi breaks his silence: “What poems!

  No candles, no flame burning the lover moth,

  No jug-bearer of wine capturing lovers’ hearts.

  No fauna and flora that eternity abide.