from the court in Bokhara they learned the ceremonies of sovereignty79
from the court in Bokhara they acquired the custom of writing
they were horsemen armed with bows and arrows
they became fine calligraphers, eloquent speakers
and trampled down Indian temples
they plundered the treasures of India
they sat among the scholars of Khwarazm80
with Khwarazmi and Biruni81
Farrokhi and Onsori and Manuchehri wrote poetry for them82
Bayhaqi and Maymandi and Ali Qarib sat in their courts83
This family whose story I am writing
hanged Hasanak84
this family whose story I am writing
left Hasanak on the gallows as a spectacle
for seven years
this family became dust, the dust
of their glory can be seen in Lashkar Bazaar
This family whose story I am writing
took the name of a city
a city to the east of Khorasan
the name of this city
is Ghazni
Farzaneh Khojandi
Born 1960
Farzaneh Khojandi was born in Khojand, in northern Tajikistan; she is considered to be the foremost contemporary Tajik poet.
*
Like an uninhabited island, I’m getting used to silence
Forgotten one, my fame approaches your rare presence
Being alone is a pleasure, a pleasure you’ll discover,
And after that you won’t want embraces from a lover
Like the sky, I don’t want the clothes of hypocrisy
Better a shroud than such a cloak of misery
At thirty-six, like a child, there’s weeping in one’s heart
It’s too late for a season of wild desires to start
A sensitive heart draws someone looking for affection
When could your light shoulders accept such a heavy burden?
You told me, “You don’t know that tasting apples is forbidden”
But in the apple juice the vendors sell that taste is hidden . . .
Beneath the evil skies there are six kinds of feebleness;
Where can one search for Seyavash, for strength true men possess?85
Azita Ghahreman
Born 1962
Born in Mashhad, Azita Ghahreman has made her home in Sweden since 2006. As well as books of poetry in Persian, she has written three books in Swedish.
*
Alleys in a Far-off Land
I still dream
of my red bicycle
on the green shore of summer,
of the shadow of my hair
spread out in the water
and my homework
spattered with grape-seeds.
Getting older,
growing tall, was difficult
in a place of thorns and stones
letting the rainbow-colored marbles slip from my hand, one by one
without a playmate
sitting at the side of the alley
with a rusty bicycle in a shed
a photograph of green highways on the wall.
*
Eve
I come from a land of ancient days
from Eve’s simple anxieties,
Mariam’s gnostic sorrow86
Rahil’s fourteen years of waiting87
Zuleikha’s tormented longing88
I was always wandering in search of your beautiful face
O love.
I injured myself
and stayed awake all night
chanting your name
and my days were all spent
searching for your voice
as if it could be heard in the breeze.
The thousand years of my life
are a hidden waiting
in the breath of the Judas trees and waves and spring.
All of my moments
are simply a commentary
on the scent of your presence
the shadow of your passing by
and your leaving me
In the desert of longing for what’s gone89
despised
I am stranded there, in my thirst,
like Hagar
Parween Pazhwak
Born 1967
Parween Pazhwak was born in Kabul, and is from a prominent literary and diplomatic family. She completed a medical degree, intending to practice in Afghanistan, but became a refugee after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and sought asylum in Canada.
*
Mother’s Shared Blouse
I put your blouse on, mother
and the scent of our house
the scent of smiles and kindness and trust
the scent of our garden
with the caged canaries’ twittering
the scent of the window
with our neighbor’s rooster crowing
the scent of bread
the scent of people’s sorrow
the scent of the flowers our father planted in our garden
the scent of the angry wind blowing from the martyrs’ graves overwhelmed me
I put your blouse on, mother
and the sound of the pigeons in our house’s passageway
filled my heart with their cooing
I put your blouse on, mother
and went back to you
to your kind world
to my own familiar earth
to beloved Kabul!
I put your blouse on, mother
and found my sisters again
and found my friends again
and my hopes came back to me one by one
and I saw once again
the reflection of my smile in the brail
of green water in our water-tank
I put your blouse on, mother
and I called on God
with the name I called Him when I was a child
and I prayed for you, mother
I prayed for you . . .
If I wrap your blouse
around our wild almond tree
it will blossom
If I spread it over
the dried-up twigs of our grape-vine
it will cast shade
If I entrust your blouse
to the wind
once again lights will shine in the foothills of our mountains,
Aseh and Shirdarvazeh
If I let your blouse
wander in the alleyways
the orphans will find clothes
If I could divide up
your blouse, they would not be able
to divide up our land!
If the dried-up well in our garden
could remember your blouse
it would give water again
it would give to our hearts
an image of morning and sunlight
and we would all remember
the shared blouse of our mother
the shared blouse of our mother . . .
Khaledeh Forugh
Born 1972
A native of Kabul, Khaledeh Forugh has an MA in Persian Language and Literature from Kabul University and a PhD from the National University of Tajikistan in Doshanbeh. She is a member of the Department of Persian Studies at Kabul University, and has published numerous books of poetry, a novel, and a volume of literary criticism.
*
It Came from the Past
It came here from the past, it came in its magnificence,
Rudaki was its presence, and Rabe’eh its innoc
ence90
Its green eyes glittered with the vividness of life itself,
Life’s waters flowed within its poets’ lyrics and laments.
It came here from the past, through complicated branching ways,
It opened roads from roads, they were its guide and its defense,
It came here from the past as if it sang like Nakisa,91
From King Parviz’s time it brought its regal radiance,92
And in its voice was music sorrow gave and Barbad played,93
His song a river, and his voice a moon of eloquence.
Its breaths were Avicenna’s and its steps were Ferdowsi’s,
And it was blasphemy and faith and known experience;
The steps of Ferdowsi paced out a noble epic meter94
And Avicenna’s breaths sought knowledge and intelligence—95
Knowledge was his intent, and his beginning too was knowledge,
A spirit from the past accompanied his search for sense,
It came out of the past and it was nourished by the past
And from the past it brought the day of his accomplishments.
The palace of the first Darius was its royal home
And his Atossa’s eyes, Atossa’s eyes, its residence;96
It gave its stature to the towering castle of Jamshid
And with its cloak it hid the ladder of his arrogance.97
It came here from the past and it was agony or fire—
Hafez was all its tears, and they were its deliverance,98
And it was poetry or pain, a history or tradition,
Its veins were Bayhaqi, the Masnavi its glorious sense.99
It trod the alleys of existence in its modern form
And from the past a reed flute’s tones were its accompaniments.
It raised love’s hand, and gradually it grew and it matured,
Its prayer was Mowlavi’s for all that freedom represents—
It was the most lost fantasy and the most endless bridge
And Shams’s burning love, and all his unrestrained laments;100
It came here from the past and was it strong now or grown weak?
Whence did it come, and where was it, that knew no hence or whence?
It came here from the past, the ancestor of all the world,
And saw that it was blessed now by its own essential sense.
*
The Empty Alleys of the World
These ancient mountain slopes are poets, even so,
Escaped now from themselves, contemporaries we know,
These ancient mountain slopes, the winds’ assault by night,
They’ve traveled here from many, many years ago.
Home to the sleepers in the cave they’re full of life101
Within the empty alleys of the world they wander to and fro
And they were there, confronting Moses’ heart,
As they were passers-by of weeping Farhad’s woe.102
They nourish myths, their poems are ambiguous,
They’re visible, high summits thrust up from below;
They’ve burned within themselves, they’re lost within themselves
Though lost beyond all loss they’re near at hand, and though
Their voices seethe with silence, still
The last word’s always theirs, both now and long ago;
They are the high imaginings of God
These ancient mountain slopes are poets, even so.
Mandana Zandian
Born 1972
Born in Esfahan, Dr. Mandana Zandian is a graduate of Shahid Beheshti Medical School in Tehran, and is currently a research oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. She moderates a weekly Persian-language radio program on poetry and related cultural subjects.
*
Death too will grow old one day
he’ll become weary
and sit down,
he’ll bend over, with his head on his knees
he’ll hug himself, like life
and stretch out his hands, hesitantly, in the alphabet of stone fragments, walls, and
drag words out of the dark earth’s depths and
bring them together, sculpt them, break off bits
in a faded voice
and he’ll think the moon
is a kinder glance for leaving, and
love
a past more complete than the road, and
he’ll stand up
draw breath, blink
freed
on the threshold of the short pause
that is life
*
Words are alive
they breathe
they dream
they make love and
like pain
they twist in death’s waist
they give up the ghost and
they become poems and
they remain . . .
we are not alone;
we are wandering birds
that do not wake up
from words’ dream
Mana Aqai
Born 1973
Mana Aqai was born in Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf, and moved to Sweden with her family in 1978. She has an MA in Iranian Languages from Uppsala University, and now lives in Stockholm, where she works as a professional translator.
*
You said: “Be the bride of my dreams
and I’ll come and wake you with seven kisses”
and seven times you wrote “black” to break the red spell
and seven times I went under the snow
so that one by one snowflakes would rest on my eyelids
and the velvet of my dreams would grow more white
and this is how seven nights and seven days passed for me
from the moment that the story’s wicked stepmothers
saw themselves as more beautiful in the mirror
every night I say, The prince is on his way, he’ll arrive
and I start up seven times
and I see seven men behind the window-panes
all dwarfs
*
Stains
They came late
out of narrow suffocating passageways
like bloodstains
from cuts on the fingers of a sleepless woman
they spilled onto the paper
and couldn’t be washed out
or cleaned with a handkerchief
behind each one
there was an unhealed scar
an unspoken pain
and a cry that, out of fear,
was imprisoned in cells’ depths
they were uneven red circles
my poems
and the more I looked at them
they grew wider and wider
until one day my eyes
couldn’t see the white spaces anymore
Pegah Ahmadi
Born 1974
Pegah Ahmadi was born in Tehran and studied Persian Literature at the University of Tehran. She published three books of poetry in Iran, which were subsequently banned due to her political outspokenness. Ahmadi left the country as a political refugee in 2009, and has since lived in the West. She has published ten books in all, two of which have been translated into German; she has also translated a volume of Sylvia Plath’s poetry into Persian.
*
Why in the depths of no-progress is nothing moving?
language is a cutting off of terror
look, blood doesn’t flow from the wrist,
and neither does it clot
and I, whose eye was an open
history of intensity,
throw a razor into the abyss.
Drag me into the street
that is the dark castle of life
look back at your shadow, so that it won’t fall from the rope.
Nothing is more frightening than when nothing happens
how does language die?
where does it make an absence?
cut me off, so that my being will gush out
take me as a whole
and cut me into pieces
the revolution has collapsed
and for half a century love has been a monster.
Stand here, on the harp,
and bring something
to consciousness in me
bring me the symphony’s invoices
a shattered forehead
in which a spear is hidden
and the neck choked by amber
Oh, you locked jowl!
Am I language, that I bind you up with a fissure
spin my body round
are you language? To blow me up?
Why in the depths of no progress is nothing moving?
Give a signature to my bruised neck
ascend a vein
and make a leaden face
that will shine on the ceiling;
with a half-drunk tongue of intensity
it cannot sleep
the revolution has collapsed
and for half a century love has been a monster
Granaz Moussavi
Born 1976
Granaz Moussavi was born in Tehran; in 1997 she and her family emigrated to Australia. She has a postgraduate degree in film editing from Flinders University, Australia. Moussavi’s poetry has been widely translated into a number of languages; she is also a film-maker and has made a number of well-received films, including My Tehran for Sale (2008) and 1001 Nights (2006), a documentary on Iranian poets in exile.
*
The Blue Headscarf’s Words
I could be wearing all the clouds in the world
and they’d still throw a cloak over my shoulders
so that I wouldn’t be naked
here the moon shines in the dusk
the hand that hits me
doesn’t know
that sometimes a minnow
can fall in love with a whale
there’s no point in their shouting at me
they don’t know
that I’ve become a fish now
that your river’s gone over my head
I don’t want to wear the world’s deserts
or to breathe