Forough Farrokhzād: The Window

(http://foroughfarrokhzad.tripod.com/id56.html)
no copyright infringement intended

If you come to my home,
Bring me a light
And a nook
From which I may watch the crowding of the glad lane.
(Forough Farrokhzād, The Gift, the blog of Cizdabedar)

There are two opposite universes in the poetry of Forough Farrokhzād, I think, and each one plays ambiguously, as the relationship of the poet with each of the two worlds is ambiguous. The inner space, offering intimacy and imposing limitations. The outer space, desired while challenging. And the feeling that a light and a nook would suffice, to stay inside while dreaming the big adventure of open roads.

I found in the anthology of Mid-East contemporary literature (Tablet and Pen, edited by Reza Aslan) another poem of Forough Farrokhzād: The Window, again in the rendering of Sholeh Wolpé. I would offer you here another English rendering, of Leila Farjami. A window at the border between the two universes, a window would suffice, to remain inside and to look through it, resembling a well's ring reaching the earth at the finiteness of its heart.

One window is sufficient

One window for beholding

One window for hearing

One window

resembling a well's ring

reaching the earth at the finiteness of its heart

and opening towards the expanse of this repetitive blue kindness

one window filing the small hands of loneliness

with nocturnal benevolence

of the fragrance of wondrous stars

and thereof,

one can summon the sun

to the alienation of geraniums.

One window will suffice me.

I come from the homeland of dolls

from beneath the shades of paper-trees

in the garden of a picture book

from the dry seasons of impotent experiences in friendship and love

in the soil-covered alleys of innocence

from the years of growing pale alphabet letters

behind the desks of the tuberculous school

from the minute that children could write stone

on the blackboard

and the frenzied starlings would fly away

from the ancient tree.

I come from the midst of carnivorous plant roots

and my brain is still overflowed

by a butterfly's terrifying shriek

crucified with pins

onto a notebook.

When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice

and in the whole city

they were chopping up my heart's lanterns

when they would blindfold me

with the dark handkerchief of Law

and from my anxios temples of desire

fountains of blood would squirt out

when my life had become nothing

nothing

but the tic-tac of a clock,

I discovered

I must

must

must love,

insanely.

One window will suffice me

one window to the moment of awareness

observance

and silence.

now,

the walnut sapling

has grown so tall that it can interpret the wall

by its youthful leaves.

Ask the mirror

the redeemer's name.

Isn't the shivering earth beneath your feet lonelier than you?

the prophets brought the mission of destruction to our century

aren't these consecutive explosions

and poisonous clouds

the reverberation of the sacred verses?

You,

comrad,

brother,

confidant,

when your reach the moon

write the history of flower massacres.

Dreams always plunge down from their naive height

and die.

I smell the four-petal clover

which has grown on the tomb of archaic meanings.

Wasn't the woman

buried in the shroud of anticipation and innocence,

my youth?

Will I step up the stairs of curiosity

to greet the good God who strolls on the rooftop?

I feel that time has passed

I feel that moment is my share of history's pages

I feel that desk is a feigned distance

between my tresses

and the hands of this sad stranger.

Talk to me

What else would the one offering the kindness of a live flesh want from

you?

but the understanding of the sensation of existence.

Talk to me

I am in the window's refuge

I have a relationship with the Sun.

translated by Leila Farjami       
(http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/selectedworks/selectedworks8.asp)

(Forough Farrokhzād)

(Reza Aslan)