*
My heart, circle the heart, which is the hidden ka’bah—
That ka’bah was made by Abraham, this one by God.9
*
I flee from knowing others so much that
Even before a mirror my eyes stay shut.
*
Love came, and gave my harvest’s wealth away for straw,
It gave my happiness away for half a sigh—
My crazy heart has bartered for a glance my soul,
My soul, which not a hundred worlds could hope to buy.
*
Love comes, and steals a wise man’s common sense outright
(Thieves dowse the light first, to stay out of sight);
A blind man wouldn’t hurt himself as I have done—
I’m in the house but can’t locate its owner’s light.
*
O waterfall, why do you groan incessantly?
Who’s made your forehead frown like this in agony?
What dreadful pain is it that makes you constantly
Batter your head against a stone, and weep like me?
*
The governor of Lahore, Aqel Khan, was said to be so smitten with Makhfi that he sent her this poem:
I’ll be your nightingale if I should see you in the garden
With others there I’ll be your fluttering moth, if I should see you;
Showing yourself to be the shining light of an assembly—
Well, that’s no good to me; it’s in your shift I want to see you.
Makhfi sent back this answer:
The nightingale forsakes the rose to see me in the garden,
The pious Brahmin will forsake his idols when he sees me—
I’m hidden in my words, like scent within a rose’s petal,
Whoever wants to see me, it’s in my words he’ll see me.
*
Another exchange between Aqel Khan and Makhfi (again, Aqel Khan is pushing his luck by being a bit risqué, and again Makhfi is fending him off, this time with an implied insult):
What feeds on nothing and will rise,
And, standing, vomits, and then dies?
Makhfi sent back this answer:
Women provoke this thing to stir . . .10
Your mother’s sure to know—ask her.
*
This time Makhfi initiates the exchange:
Although my sensibility’s like Layli’s
My heart is like Majnun’s and wants to roam—11
I think of wandering in the wilderness . . .
But shame’s the chain that keeps me here at home.
Aqel Khan tries to rise to the occasion:
When love is young and new and innocent,
It’s very true, shame might restrain it
But when it’s grown up, wild, and confident,
What shame or modesty could chain it?
But Makhfi isn’t having it:
Pure-minded folk are always circumspect,
And shame will keep them modest and discreet;
But when a bird’s as shameless as you are,
What shame could ever claim to chain its feet?
*
May the arm break that hasn’t clasped
its love in its embrace
The eyes go blind that haven’t loved
to see their loved one’s face
A hundred springtime buds are here,
each opening with such beauty—
The garden buds within my heart
show no such glowing grace
My efforts are all over now,
and I can’t even show
A fistful of the dirt from my
love’s street—no, not a trace
For years blood gathers in the musk-deer’s
navel till it’s musk—
What’s that to me? It’s not the mole
upon my loved one’s face.12
*
I’m upset with my heart, and with me she’s the same,
We’re stone and glass, and I’m to blame and she’s to blame;
When, Makhfi, shall I reach the dwelling of my friend?13
The road ahead of me is dark . . . my horse is lame.
*
The leaf there’s red with blood and henna-dyed;
I am a princess sunk in poverty,
My name’s the only lovely part of me.14
*
No shoot of joyful green grew from my being’s soil,
My thirst was never quenched by happiness’s wine—
The precious springtime of my life was spent in searching,
For all my efforts though, no wedding dress was mine.
Zinat al-Nissa Beigum
1643–1721
The second daughter of the Moghul emperor Aurangzib (r. 1658–1707) and sister of Makhfi [Zib al-Nissa] (this page), Zinat al-Nissa was known for her learning and piety, and refused to marry. In the last years of his life she was her father’s closest companion, and became a discreet but effective power behind the throne. She was buried in a mosque that she herself had endowed, in Delhi.*
*
God’s grace suffices me as my
companion in the tomb; His cloud
Whose shadow rains down mercy is
sufficient for me as a shroud.15
Soltan Daghestani
Eighteenth century
A contemporary of the last Safavid king, Soltan Hossein (r. 1688–1726). Soltan Daghestani lived through the conquest of Esfahan by Afghan forces in 1722, and the fall of the Safavid empire. She was the cousin of Valeh Daghestani, the author of one of the most important collections of biographical notices of poets, who died in 1766.
*
I knew how weak my lover’s promise was,
I knew this handsome suitor was cold-hearted,
And finally he left me in love’s autumn . . .
I knew spring’s fickle habits when we started.
Agha Beigum
Eighteenth century
All that is known of Agha Beigum is that her family was from Khorasan, in northeastern Iran, and that her father’s name was Mohammad Khan Torkman.
*
In this world all the sane and sensible I see are sad;
But madness is another world than theirs—my heart, go mad!
Hayati
Eighteenth century
A contemporary of Karim Khan Zand, the ruler of much of Iran from 1751 until his death in 1779.
*
There is no sympathizer here to sympathize
There is no confidante in whom I can confide
There is no friend who’ll offer friendship to me here
Though friends abound, and all around, on every side
*
Pecking for seeds within this dusty cage,
You say your nest in heaven is what you mourn for—
Break the cage open then, and spread your wings,
Fly to the heavenly gardens you were born for.
*
I’m wretched, and to cheer me up
he knows what he should do;
Deliberately he acts as though
he hasn’t got a clue.
Aysheh Afghani
Eighteenth century
Aysheh Afghani was a contemporary of the Afghan king Timur Shah Durrani (r. 1772–93); her son Faiz Talab took part in Timur Shah’s attempt to conquer Kashmir, and was killed in battle. She is the first important woman poet writing in Persian who would have thought of herself as an Afghan (until the eighteenth century, western Afghanistan was seen as part of Iran, while the eastern area of the country was seen as
Indian).
*
I saw the sunset in the sky
at evening prayer time, tulip red—
It was as though they’d killed the sun
and there her blood-soaked skirts were spread.16
*
My Love was here; but there was no one here, that day;
Gently His strong grip snatched my wounded heart away—
And when the One who stole my heart unveiled His face
The angels and mankind knelt down before such Grace.
I slept, and in my dream a flower-filled garden shone;
I started up from sleep—all trace of it was gone.
That day, I handed Him my vow of slavery;
The pens of angel scribes recorded it for me.17
*
The things your sweet voice says have killed me
The black eyes of your gaze . . . have killed me
And by your wine-red lips I swear
Your teasing, coy delays . . . have killed me
Your stature like a cypress tree’s,
Your curls’ enchanting maze . . . have killed me
Your face—a candle in the night—
Your kindness and your praise . . . have killed me
Your sweet-talk and your sugared lips
Your ceremonious ways . . . have killed me
Your face’s flower-like scents that leave
Me wondering in a daze . . . have killed me
Don’t be so proud of your cruel beauty
Your arrogant displays . . . have killed me
You look on Aysheh with contempt—
How much your hard heart weighs . . . it’s killed me
*
A lament for her son:18
Are you content that I’ve a gaping wound
Piercing my gut, that I’m without my son?
My lacerated breasts, my eyes all tears,
They’re all for Faiz Talab, my absent one.
The heavens’ cruelty means I only see
Donkeys and cows—how long must this go on,
Now that I’m separated from my lion,
My only lord, my mighty champion?
I’m like Farhad, striking an ax against19
My forehead, in despair for what has gone;
At dawn, in my love’s gardens, I shall be
A nightingale with my lamenting song.
I’m drowned within a sea of grief and sorrow,
Trapped in this misery that’s never done;
Aysheh! How long shall I lament and moan,
Going from door to door, without my son?
Reshheh
Late eighteenth/early nineteenth century
Well known for her poetry in her own lifetime, she was the daughter of the period’s most famous male poet, Hatef Esfahani (d. c.1783).
*
I’ve put up with a lifetime of your tyranny,
hoping for your fidelity,
And now my life’s gone by, and faithfulness from you
was never once vouchsafed to me.
From all the world I chose you; now, too late, I see
what recompense was given me—
It’s that I hear the scorn and blame of all the world
deriding and reviling me.
And if it’s true that handsome lovers’ promises
are weak and broken easily
I’ve never seen or heard, my love, of any vow
as weak as that you made to me.
My stony-hearted love, you broke my heart, but I’ve
kept faith with you unceasingly
And I have never taken back my love for you,
although you have abandoned me.
You pierced me with the arrow of your callousness
while I lay weeping piteously—
What was my sin but this, that I put up with all
your cold hard-heartedness to me?
And since I drank the wine of your first kindness down
it’s never happened that I see
My glass of pleasure empty of that poisoned drink
my loving you has poured for me.
So what has Reshheh gained from all the benefits
his cloud of gifts has rained on me,
Now that the lightning of my grief has burned
the fields I planted once so hopefully?
*
How would it be if you should take from me
The anguish that I suffer secretly
By whispering as secretly to me,
By talking to me with sweet sympathy?
Your kindness wouldn’t hurt the flowers you see,
Nor would the nightingale give up its song
If you should sit here on the grass with me
And show me truly you’re aware of me
My helpless heart’s endured your tyranny
And it could be that it is leaving me—
My soul is ready to depart I know
From all the cruelty you inflict on me
If, out of kindness, like a cloud you’d give
A little water to my hope’s palm tree
I wouldn’t want the showers of spring, or fear
The harm that autumn’s winds might bring to me
If I were like Reshheh, in agony
Because you were so far away from me,
You’d never know the grief the world can give
If from this anguish you’d deliver me
*
My heart beats wildly in my breast as though
Pierced by a shaft shot from his eyebrows’ bow.
Maluli
Late eighteenth/early nineteenth century
Maluli lived in Shiraz, and was a contemporary of the Qajar monarch Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834).
*
If I don’t like my friends, and choose
To make friends with my enemies—what’s it to you?
If I spend time with who knows who,
It’s me who’s hurt if someone sees—what’s it to you?
If I should hide my face away
From pestering acquaintances—what’s it to you?
If one day I confide to strangers
My privacies and secrecies—what’s it to you?
“Where are you going now?” To one
Who has my heart’s allegiances—what’s it to you?
“And now where are they taking you?”
To gardens and to shady trees—what’s it to you?
How often you say, “Don’t drink wine
With strangers!” I’ll drink just as I please—what’s it to you?
And if I tell both friends and strangers
My innermost anxieties—what’s it to you?
If day and night Malul endures20
A lover’s endless agonies—what’s it to you?
*
My wretched heart’s been captured by a heathen—21
What can I do, O God, in my despair?
I say God bless the dervishes, for whom22
This faith or that is neither here nor there
*
My little house shines brightly now my lover’s here . . .
I wish
And friends surround me with their laughter and good cheer . . .
I wish
Would that I’d patience now my lover’s far away
Or that his heart felt pity for his lover here . . .
I wish
Would that I wore a Christian’s belt, and I were drunk,23
Hungover in a wine-shop, with my lover near . . .
I wish
If you would be my nurse and doctor, O my love,
I’d stay unwell forever just to keep you here . . .
I wish
And then perhaps you would perceive my pain and ask,
“But when was your poor heart so badly hurt, my dear? . . .”
I wish
I dreamed of you last night, that other girl was with you—
My luck that’s half asleep might wake and reappear . . .
I wish
Would that I weren’t lamenting like a nightingale
Or that you were among the flowers I sing to here . . .
I wish
You act so cruelly to your Maluli, and why?
Strangers should treat each other well, and be sincere . . .
I wish
*
How long will you torment me in this way,
Making my heart more wretched every day?
If, in this night of sorrow, I should die—
Tell me, on Judgment Day, what will you say?
Effat
Born in 1798
Effat was a native of Shiraz but very little is known about her otherwise. The author of a book of short literary biographies, Mirza Ali Akbar Navab Shirazi, wrote of her, “Although she had had no teacher, and had not been instructed in the rules of poetry and poetics by any authority, due to her instinctive ability she was able to produce verses that are both eloquent and correct.” *
*
Did roses take his body as their pattern for such loveliness,
Or did his body imitate the graceful beauty they possess?
Did his disheveled hair learn all its tumbling curls from hyacinths,
Or did the hyacinths see him and imitate each tangled tress?
Did I learn from the gardens’ birds my anguished songs and heartfelt cries,
Or did the birds learn all their songs from me bemoaning my distress?
Agha Baji
Died 1832 or 1833
One of the many wives of Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), though little else is known about her.
*
How fortunate that man is who contrives to dwell
Where you dwell, where the weather’s fine, and all is well . . .