Iran’s greatest modern poet

Over the years I have translated a few poems by what I consider the foremost modern Iranian poet, Forough Farrokhzad. I grew up listening to her poems, sometimes read to me by my mother and at other times in her own voice from cassette recordings of her reading, even before I could read and though perhaps a little young to understand them at first I know that they always made a deep resonance in me. The purity and beauty of her Farsi, the almost shocking depth of her linguistic facility, her genius at transmitting the most complex ideas and emotions without resort to “Poetic” language of the past, of Iranian tradition, of references to our illustrious old poets, her use of street vernacular without sounding in the slightest condescending or pretentious, excited and energised me from even those early years. As soon as I was able to read she was one of the first writers I turned to.

When I moved to England, two books of hers were amongst the few Farsi language books I kept, and still have with me. Below is one of my absolute favourites. I decided to translate it again because I felt all the translations I’ve seen of it have been somewhat deficient. Though mostly literally correct they usually lose the simplicity of her language and the direct, almost naive quality of her genius with words as mirrors of emotions and ideas.

Another Birth | Forough Farrokhzad

The whole of my being is a dark hymn
which carries you within it time after time
to the eternal dawns of flowering and growing
In this hymn, I gently breathed you, oh
In this hymn, I
Joined you with trees and water and fire

Life is perhaps
a long street where every day a woman passes with her basket

Life is perhaps
a string from which a man hangs himself from the branch
Life is perhaps an infant returning from school
Life, is perhaps the lighting of a cigarette
that marks the distance between two acts of love

Or the distracted glance of a passerby
who raises his hat
and with an empty smile calls to another
“Good Morning”

Life is perhaps that fleeting moment
when my gaze annihilates itself in the pupils of your eyes
And it is in this sensation
that I join you to the moon and the darkness

In a room, which is the size of loneliness
my heart,
which is the size of love
looks at the simple excuses of its happiness
at the beauty of decay in a vase of flowers
at the lone sapling that you planted in my garden
at the song of the caged canary
which is the size of a window

Ah
This is my share
this is my share
my share
is a sky which can be taken from me
by the simple drawing of a curtain
my share, is descending an abandoned staircase
to become something putrid and alien
my share is a dazed stroll though the garden of memories
in the grip of a lost voice which says
“I love your hands”

I will plant my hands in the garden
I will grow, I know, I know, I know
and the swallows will lay their eggs
in the ink stained hollows of my hands

I shall hang two twin red cherries
as earrings from my two ears
and glue petals of dahlia to my finger nails

There is a street where
boys who were once in love with me, still,
with the same tangled hair and the same long necks and skinny legs,
remember the innocent smiles of a the little girl who one night
the wind took away

There is an alley which my heart
has stolen from the places of my childhood

The traverse of a volume in linear time
and a volume impregnating the dry timeline
a volume aware of an image
which returns to the invitation of a mirror

And this is how someone dies
and someone remains

No poor stream, which exhausts itself in a pool of stagnant water
shall yield a precious pearl

I
know of a sad little spirit
in an ocean
who plays her heart
gently, gently
on a wooden flute.

A sad little spirit
who every dusk dies with a kiss
and with a kiss is reborn at dawn