In her mouth

Carried with her

From a prison in Iran.

I know that from behind bars

One can see a flower

In the face of the moon,

And hear the migrating cranes

In the blue sky.

I know that behind eyelids

And inside clenched hands

And between each execution

And the lines of the last letters

And the whispering knocks on the wall

And the torn seams of joy

And the empty holes of pain

the twilight of hope

And the hidden summit of pride

One can,

Yes, one can hide Spring.

And yet, I wonder in those dark cells

How one can grow a narcissus

So white,

Without any stain of blood.

Eight paces from the gate,

Which scroll speaks of this treasure?

Oh, earth!

If only I could feel your pulse

Or make a jug out of your body.

Alas! I'm not a physician.

I'm not a potter.

I am only an heir, deprived,

wandering in search of a marked treasure.

This is the mark of my tomb:

Eight paces from the gate,

Sixteen paces toward the wall.

In the Cemetery of the Infidels.

When my late wife, Ezzat Tabaiyan, was executed on January 7, 1982, her body and those of others were buried without gravestones in the Cemetery of the Infidels, near Tehran. Families were obliged to determine the burial locations by measuring paces.

We climbed the Great Wall of China

And reached the second watchtower

Where a narrow, dark minaret

Joined the blue sky in a balcony.

There, I saw three poets of Tang dynasty:

Wang Wei, the monk,

Li Bo, the mystic

And Du Fu, the sage.

They were looking at the deep valley

From the top of the balcony.

I told them that I have read Sutra

And have heard scattered narratives

Of Lao Tse and Confucius,

And yet, since my adolescence

I have only been attached to their poetry

Which, like the cypress of Chu-Ko Liang temple,

Has deep, ancient roots.

All three remained silent.

And only Du Fu smiled.

Then we descended the mountain

Sat on a stone seat in a tavern

And ordered a jug of rice wine

With a basket of fragrant lychees.

While a pet cricket

Was silent in his gourd cage,

I recited Du Fu's "Great Wall" poem

For my traveling companion:

"Riding horses, advancing in the blizzard

A pale line of people climb the mountain.

At their posts, they grab dangerous cliffs

Feeling ice sheets under their fingers.

They have left their homelands long ago

And don't know when their forced labor is over.

At sunset, they envy the clouds floating toward the south:

Can these clouds carry our messages back home?"

Finally, from an Uyghur girl peddler,

Who had almond-shaped eyes

Like Afaq, the love of the Persian poet Nezami,

We bought Great Wall t-shirts.

Alas! After the first wash

The wall disappeared

And all of our underwear

Became tinged with a red memory.

             

And grow like fragrant watercress

Out of your hands.

The New Year will come,

And you will sit

At the cloth of the "seven s's".

You will look in the mirror

And along with the red goldfish

You will be freed

From the confines of the fishbowl.

And you will pass

From the lonely ash tree,

The stately hyacinth,

The anxious garlic,

The drunken vinegar, And the happy silver coin.

And along with the bard of Shirafaz

You will be filled with the sound of love.

And so, why be sad?

When the Thirteenth Day comes

You'll go with the flowing water

And speak to the sky and the earth

Of the beautiful moments of love.

On the Persian New Year, the first day of spring, it is traditional to spread on a cloth seven items, the names of which all begin with the letter sin ("s"). These "seven s's" are typically ash tree, hyacinth, garlic, vinegar, a coin, sprouts (wheat, watercress, or other), and sumac. Other items put on the cloth (not beginning with sin) are a goldfish (in a fishbowl), a mirror, and either a Koran or a copy of Haifez's collected poems. Haifez, the fourteenth century Persian lyricist, is known as 'the bard of Shiraz.' Thirteen days later, people must go hiking and cast their sprouts into a stream.

             

They humiliated you with a piece of stick

Only a few months after your rant

That you would march alley by alley

And search house by house

To purge all Libya

Of brave women and men

Who, after years of suppression,

Finally rebelled against you.

You learned only the worst lesson:

From nationalists, anti-imperialist shows

From populists, hate of individual liberties

And from theocrats, return to the past.

When they took you out

From a drain pipe in Sirte's highway

You begged them and said:

"My sons!

Have mercy on your father."

But they without mercy

Sodomized you with a stick

And ended your era

With three shots.

How painful!

In the last forty-two years

With your torture chambers and henchmen

You did not teach your victims

Any thing else.  

And wipes it from the pavement

There remains only your sunny smile,

Your tall baseball bat

Leaning against the wall,

And your backpack full of books

Waiting for your shoulders.

Curse the hand that made the gun

Curse the hand that put it in the shop

And curse the hand that pulled the trigger!

I am cold and empty

Like the shell of a bullet

Because I know that your mother

Will not pass another school again

And will not sit on bleachers

In another baseball game

And will not open her empty oven

To heat fragrant tortillas

For your dinner. 

Passing by

Wearing a long skirt

She leans on a metal walker

Scratching the ground:

"Sir! What day is today?"

I say: "Jeudi"

And sometimes: "Donnerstag"

Because I know

That Edna had fled Germany

And married in Paris

she passes by me

Like the heavy train of victims

Leaving behind their voices

Out of the reach of time.

-----in memory of Vazgin Mansourian  

The king hung you like a crucifix

From the neck of my city, Isfahan:

With your cathedral and cobblestones

With your taverns and goldsmiths

And your blushing daughters.

The city remained apart from you

Lying beyond Zaiandeh River.

Only poets of midnight

Knocked at the door of your taverns

And hikers of early morning

Disturbed your trickling spring.

For hundreds of years

We grew apart

Until the canals of Zaiandeh River

Brought our hearts together

And the blood of Vazgin

Flowed into my heart.

Oh, little Armenia!

The tyrants wanted you as a crucifix

But you rose again

Like the crucified Christ.

             

I cook the black-eyed peas

Until they become soft.

A handful of rice

A few drops of olive oil

One spoon of tomato sauce

A bit of salt and pepper

Green leaves of spinach

And white cloves of garlic

So charmingly asleep

In their bride's veils...

My pottage is ready to simmer.

The room is filled with familiar scents

And I know tonight,

When I walk my son home

He will finish his pottage

And perhaps ask for another bowl.

                

And our clothes are losing

Their fragrant nightly memories:

The scent of firewood and wet grass

The stains of wine on your blouse

And the blackberries on my cuffs

The fingertips of morning dew on your shoulders

And the brown mark of earth on my back

Rolling, rolling under the fading stars

And suddenly the big red ball of the sun!

Let it turn around, around

and mingle our clothes together.

Love is stainless

And its clean shirt

Always shines.