- I Shall Salute the Sun Once Again
I shall salute the sun once again to the stream that flowed within me,
to the clouds that were my tallest thoughts, to the painful growth of aspens in the garden who endured the seasons of drought with me, to the flock of crows who as a gift brought the fields nocturnal scent to me, to my mother who lived in a mirror and revealed the figure of my old age, and to the earth, whose burning womb I’ve filled with green seeds in my lust for repetition I shall salute once again. - The Forbidden Walls
Now forbidding walls
frontier walls rise again in the quiet night like plants sentries posted on my love’s estate I can sense it I know when it’s time to pray Now all the stars are making love Come back with me Come back with me to the start of creation to the fragrant core of a fertilized egg to the moment I was born from you Come back with me You’ve left me incomplete Now the doves on the tips of my breasts take wing Now kisses cocooned in my lips stir like butterflies thinking of flight Now my body’s an altar ready for the rites of love Let me conceive by the moon in the sanctuary of the night Let me be filled by small raindrops
by infant hearts
by the weight of children not yet born Perhaps my love could be the womb of another Jesus.
I think about it and yet I know
I’ll never be able to leave this cage even if the warden should let me go I’ve lost the strength to fly away. Every morning from behind the bars my child’s eyes smile at me as I start to sing his kissing lips near mine. God, if I need to fly one day from behind these silent bars, how will I answer this child’s wet eyes? Let me be, I am a captive bird!
I wept all day to my mirror
Spring had given my window away to the green delusion of trees how cramped I was in my cocoon alone my crown of paper mildewed and polluting the air of that sunless realm I couldn’t anymore, I couldn’t Street sounds, bird song tennis balls bounding away flurry of children fleeing balloons bobbing, climbing like soap bubbles to the tips of their branches of string and through ancient clefts in my fortress of silence whose walls securely hemmed me in the wind called my heart by its name
panting as though sunk in love’s deepest, darkest moment.
Beside a body, tremulous and dazed
I sinned, I voluptuously sinned. O God! How could I know what I did in that dark retreat of silence? In that dark retreat of silence I sat, disheveled, beside him passion poured from his lips into mine saved I was from the agony of a foolish heart. Passion struck a flame in his eyes the red wine danced in the glass in the soft bed, my body shivered drunk on his breast. I sinned, I voluptuously sinned in arms hot and fiery I sinned in his arms ironstrong, hot, and avenging.
The crow that flew over our heads
and plunged into the perturbed thought of a passing cloud, whose cry traversed like a short spear, the expanse of the horizon will carry out news to town. Everyone knows everyone knows that you and I gazed at the garden and picked the apple from that coy and distant branch. Everyone fears everyone fears, but you and I joined the water, and mirror, and light and did not fear. In the green, flowing forest in the anxious, coldblooded sea in the strange, haughty mountain we asked, one night of the wild hares, the pearlfilled shells, the eagles “ What must be done?”
Everyone knows
we found our way into the cold and silent repose of phoenixes we found the truth in the little garden in the bashful look of a nameless flower and eternity in the neverending moment when two suns gaze at each other.
Life is perhaps
a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch.
Life is perhaps a child returning home from school. Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette in the narcotic repose between two love or the absent gaze of a passerby who takes off his hat to another passerby with a meaningless smile and a good morning. I will plant my hands in the garden I will grow, I know, I know, I know, and swallows will lay eggs in the hollow of my inkstained hands. I shall wear twin cherries as earrings and I shall put dahlia petals on my fingernails. The journey of a form along the line of time and inseminating the line of time with the form, a form conscious of an image returning from a feast in the mirror. And it is in this way that someone dies and someone lives on.
- Someone who is Like No One
I ‘ve had a dream that someone is coming.
I have dreamt of a red star, and my eye lids keep twitching and my shoes keep snapping to attention and may I go blind if I’m lying. I have dreamt of that red star when I wasn’t asleep. Someone’s coming, someone’s coming, someone who is with us in his heart, in his breath, in his voice Someone whose coming cannot be arrested and handcuffed, and thrown in jail Someone amidst firecrackers from the sky above Toopkhaneh Square will come and will spread the tablecloth and will distribute the bread and will distribute the Pepsi and will distribute the public park and will distribute the whooping cough syrup and will distribute Enrollment Day and will distribute every bloated thing and will give us our share too I dreamed.
- Let Us Believe in the Beginning of a Cold Season
And here I am
a lonely woman at the threshold of a cold season coming to understand the earth’s contamination and the elemental, sad despair of the sky and the impotence of these concrete hands. Time passed, time passed and the clock chimed four times, it chimed four times. Today is the first day of winter, I know the secret of the seasons and understand the moments well. The savior is asleep in his grave and earth, the kind acceptor, earth, invites me to peace. Perhaps those two young hands were true, those two young hands buried below the never ending snow And next year, when spring sleeps with the sky beyond the window and shoots thrust from her body the green shoots of empty branches will blossom O my dearest one, my dearest only one Let us believe in the beginning of a cold season
- It is Only the Voice that Remains
Why should I stop?
the road passes through the capillary veins of life The fertile quality of atmosphere in the womb of the moon will kill the corrupt cells, and in the chemical expanse after sunrise there is only the voice the voice that will be absorbed in the atoms of time why should I stop? The trees are my ancestors Breathing stale air depresses me A bird already dead counseled me to remember flight
To join the glowing essence of the sun, such union is the ultimate in power, pouring down the light of understanding Windmills naturally fall apart Why should I stop? Under my breast I press a sheaf of unripe wheat nursing it
The voice, the voice , the voice , only the voice
the voice of the tall yearning of plants to grow the voice of the transparent wish of water to flow the voice of starlight pouring on the surface of the pistil of the earth the voice of conception of the seed of meaning and expansion of love’s common mind The voice , the voice, the voice it is only the voice that remains.
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