A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough [First ed.]

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In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful

Salaam E-Books

A HEARTLESS CROW UPON A WINTER BARREN BOUGH Selected Poems of

Ahmad Hemmati Edited by

Dr. Hussein Mollanazar

Salaam E-Books

Dedicated to Pure Souls And Those Purged of All Glass Shards

Salaam E-Books A Heartless Crow Upon A Winter Barren Bough Selected Poems of Ahmad Hemmati Edited by Dr. Hussein Mollanazar First Edition Tehran, 2021

CONTENTS Apology ............................................................................................8 1. Truth.................................................................................................9 2. Paradise..........................................................................................10 3. To the Bahrainis ............................................................................10 4. A Droplet for Syria .......................................................................12 5. In Today’s World Masquerade....................................................12 6. To John Bolton ..............................................................................13 7. To American Ruffians and Roguish Statesmen .........................13 8. Just That Imbecile and His Mates...............................................14 9. To Interlopers in the Middle East ...............................................15 10. Last Words.....................................................................................15 11. Onward! .........................................................................................16 12. To a Lunatic Reluctant to Clear out............................................17 13. Three Bronx Cheers for These Presidents..................................17 14. A Brief Prologue to Doomsday ....................................................18 15. A Bully............................................................................................19 16. To Emanuel Grossi........................................................................19 17. No Compromise .............................................................................19 18. Apocalypse .....................................................................................20 19. An Infantile Memory ....................................................................21 20. A Childhood Play ..........................................................................21 21. To Eliot ...........................................................................................22 22. Love or Loneliness.........................................................................22 23. Men’s Sting ....................................................................................22 24. Of Some Human-Looking Beasts.................................................23 25. An Imploration ..............................................................................23 26. The Dew Beseeching the Sun........................................................24 27. To the Stillborn..............................................................................24 28. Seclusion.........................................................................................25 29. Another Judas................................................................................25 30. Self-Sacrifice ..................................................................................26 31. My Birthday...................................................................................26 32. To a Honeybee ...............................................................................27 33. To My Mother................................................................................28 34. One Year Older .............................................................................28

35. Arriving at the Age of Sixty..........................................................28 36. Happy New Year? .........................................................................29 37. You..................................................................................................29 38. To an Imaginary Friend ...............................................................30 39. Hold Out.........................................................................................30 40. Hope................................................................................................31 41. Fool Yourself..................................................................................32 42. Spring in the Air............................................................................32 43. Ah Nature! .....................................................................................33 44. Penitence ........................................................................................33 45. A Humble Tribute to Dr. Saïd Fatemi ........................................34 46. To Professor Minoo Varzegar......................................................34 47. A Note .............................................................................................36 48. Where Were You?.........................................................................36 49. Stars and Butterflies .....................................................................37 50. An Eternal Moment of Love ........................................................37 51. A Pain Engraved on Sound ..........................................................37 52. On My Blindness ...........................................................................39 53. Going out after Two Decades.......................................................39 54. To Dr. Farid Dáneshgar ...............................................................40 55. To Rebecca .....................................................................................41 56. Man’s Life Span ............................................................................42 57. What Is Man? ................................................................................43 58. Summing-Up ..................................................................................43 59. Ah, Do Not Kill!.............................................................................44 60. A Trucker’s Advice to a Sage.......................................................44 61. To Shitland Dogs ...........................................................................44 62. In Our Pots.....................................................................................45 63. To Brink and Kishan ....................................................................45 64. Advice to Ladies ............................................................................46 65. Thus Spake Zarathustra...............................................................46 66. Look and Despair ..........................................................................47 67. Triplets ...........................................................................................48 68. To Dana, My Little Nephew .........................................................49 69. In the Company of Zeroes ............................................................49 70. A Poet .............................................................................................50 71. Of Words and Winds ....................................................................50 72. In a Poets’ Group ..........................................................................51 73. Ars[e] Poetica.................................................................................51 74. Beware of This Crookèd Lizard! .................................................52 75. On a Treacherous Former Student .............................................52

76. You Fool .........................................................................................53 77. Affection .........................................................................................54 78. Why among Common Folks Again?............................................54 79. In Memory of Ebráhim Edálat-Pishé..........................................55 80. Last Poison Cuplet ........................................................................55 81. Repentance.....................................................................................55 82. Friendship ......................................................................................56 83. Perseverance ..................................................................................56 84. Quest...............................................................................................57 85. Angels .............................................................................................58 86. To Charmin....................................................................................59 87. An Actual Fairy Tale ....................................................................59 88. On Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 ......................................................61 89. I Love You......................................................................................61 90. Love Can’t Be Bought...................................................................62 91. Alcestis............................................................................................62 92. Eastern Fidelity .............................................................................63 93. To Lady Heirán .............................................................................63 94. A Spark of Love.............................................................................64 95. Inactivity ........................................................................................64 96. To My Foul Self .............................................................................65 97. Red Hanrahan ...............................................................................65 98. Taking off My Garb to Rest .........................................................66 99. My Epitaph ....................................................................................66 100. A-Z ..................................................................................................66 Notes ...............................................................................................67

APOLOGY O lofty, graceful soul!* to whom we bow now and forevermore, I earnestly seek your pardon for including my open sore, The humble pieces on my own private, grievous, and woeful state, Alongside those consecrated to you and our communal fate.

* The Immortal General Haj Qássem Soleimáni

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TRUTH1

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And then2 at the maximum point3 Of the graph of my life function I met Seemorgh4. I opened his tome of wisdom And pondered the other meanings Of human words. I had to descend heavily, Plumes5 flown away, Afterwards, to the earthen plane6 Wherefrom I had just risen up To see the plainsmen still mixing Green with crimson. After I had visited Him, I had no right to order them. I locked my tongue Lest I might vex The great painters, And left them all To suffer under their burdens — Worthy tableaux wrapped in white shrouds. I was an old wolf mocked by dogs; And indifferently watched the ants Nest on my skin; And shared with flies The morsel I had in my mouth. And then I was an unseen truth. 1980

3. Maximum point, graph, and function are used in their algebraic senses. 4. Seemorgh is the source of knowledge and insight in Persian mysticism. 5. Plumes stand, metaphorically, for our worldly concerns; when they fall, we descend like a piece of stone! 6. Plane is used in its geometric sense.

1. This poem describes our journey from the reality of life to the truth of death. Truth, versus material reality, is idealistic and beyond the perception of the senses. 2. The introductory then connoting in medias res is reminiscent of the opening of Dante’s journey to the inferno in the middle of his lifetime.

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2 PARADISE

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To establish Paradise, I have to raise swords and blades! To stop murder on the earth, I should kill the murderers!1 And to keep peace in the world, I ought to wage non-stop wars. To come to peaceful silence, I have to make grating noise. The blank Peace I ought to paint Ah, white, blue, green, or crimson! My shaky-leggèd logic I should refute with reason!2 *** Contradiction in discourse Enforces me to lock tongue. Contradiction in manner Orders to rivet myself Motionless and bewildered To the ever-moving earth!3 *** The ultimate aim is Truth. Truth is but to attain Peace. Peace is serenely silent. Utterly silent is death. And I’m a living dead soul Who leads a bittersweet life. April, 1982

3 TO THE BAHRAINIS Bahraini sisters and brothers! I’m so ashamed that I’ve not done Anything so far for your cause 1. See Etat de Siege by Camus. 2. See Russell’s Theory of Sets and Rumi’s famous logical syllogism “logicians’ feet are wooden | and wooden feet are infirm”, a logical argument refuting itself paradoxically

(Mathnawi, Book 1, Line 2128). 3. Even when we stick to the earth to remain immovable, we still move with it deterministically.

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To the Bahrainis 11

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And have shut up while your sweet souls Spill on the streets by brutish kings Who’ve never known democracy But claim that it does not exist In Syria where all were free In an only free Arab land Before they started to conspire And send swordsmen to that country. You shout out you don’t want a king And a kingdom; you want to found A republic ruled by yourselves. What you want is democracy, Not their worn out patriarchy. The shameless western rulers too Claim they’re there for democracy While they suppress you and support Your tyrants, their own satellites! The Saudis breathe their last breaths. Go on! Overthrow these households Of injustice, hypocrisy, Treason, lewdness, and corruption.

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Your kings and princes are the same In all the Persian gulf countries. They don’t allow women to drive. While they’ve hidden them under masks And they have forbidden hard drinks, They themselves invite westerners (No matter if they’re men or girls), Get drunk and go to bed with them! When the poor Afghans free themselves From the yoke of Soviet Union, Or the Persians dethrone their king, After years of tortures and jail And countless martyrs from best souls, The Saudis send Bin Laden And wage through their puppet Saddam An eight-year war against Iran Till they some day turn out to be

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Their own blood foes and thus removed.

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They and their Western supporters So censor their mass media That no one of the Westerners Knows what goes on in the region. No one knows suicide bombings In Iraq and Afghanistan And all the Middle East are done With the Saudis’ open purse And, of course, with the partnership Of western inhuman powers. Go on! Fight on! Still give martyrs!1 Eradicate the parasites! Modernize your society! And end the age of dinosaurs! 1.4.2012

4 A DROPLET FOR SYRIA A Metapoem2 In the loud dreams of the sleepers, In their sweet beds of swans feathers, There is no room for you, my words. You must pop up on burning rocks. 8.3.2012

5 IN TODAY’S WORLD MASQUERADE All that glitters is gamblers’ gold, glaring and gone. In this shade, Vouchsafe me just your heart of gold; grant me a rest from the trade Of this new brave market of tricks, your precious bullion of love, Before I lose my youthful hue, by philistines’ sewers fade. 5

To their greedy lovers I leave the charm and glint of their coins. I will rise from rags to riches just if I hold your dark braid. 1. Author’s Note: Don’t kill your tyrants, give martyrs. It’s their current supporters’ duty to execute them in due course!

2. Linguistically speaking, a poem talking about poetry or using poetic terminology

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To John Bolton 13

All for which the feces-yellow Saudis have butchered men I leave to them and their masters and to those whom they have paid. 10

Inspirit my embittered days with refreshing spring-time breath In this sun I’ve been deprived of for full many a decade, Among the Trumpian gold-crazies, as well as the Saudis, Who sit on the poor peoples’ thrones in today’s world masquerade. Dear sweetheart, surely with your love I’ll root them out with the blade They’ve used to behead the people and I’ll rain on their parade. 2.5.2017

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TO JOHN BOLTON1

Though before your eccentric boss you naught may look like a man, To us you’re no more than your wife in the kitchen by a pan. Do not draw near to our men! Mind! With their far thicker mustache They’ll tear up your most hidden point. Just lie on your soft divan. 5

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We’ve proved to the world who we are. Though all peaceful and quiet, We have been reared in battlefields and nourished by an old clan That has taught us how to cut off the stinking, wild wolves’ foul tails Throughout ages so long before your parasite life began. All conscientious people know our region was turned into This vast ruin by you robbers and your rotten, reeking fan2 With your genocides in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, And Yemen too; and now you mean to make the world a waste can. Ask the wise folks, not Sa‛udis, how we’ve annulled blockheads’ plan And tamed many a rogue who’s played the role of a superman. 5.7.2019

7 TO AMERICAN RUFFIANS AND ROGUISH STATESMEN On General Soleimani’s Martyrdom So your itchy heads seem to need to be scratched for good and all! Aye, to lie down to rest at last and get through your drunken brawl! 1. On his sending the warship Abraham Lincoln from Singapore to the Persian Gulf

2. Saudi Arabia

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Now your big noses in the air are to be rubbed in the dust To show all the bigger you come the harder you surely fall. 5

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The time has come for you scoundrels to vomit all you’ve plundered, To be chastised for your misdeeds, to get behind the eight ball; To seek a hole to creep into, to repent your imprudence, And, though too late and fruitlessly, on all fours you flee and crawl. Thank God! You, with your own foul hands, have just dug your filthy graves. All too soon of all sorts of blights you’ll face a blasting rainfall. Your own evil shall not save you! In no time you’ll plunge headlong Before all the world’s open eyes into your self-dug pitfall. The time now is ripe for you rogues to face your meanest downfall Hopeless to bounce back to even your ignoble past recall. 1.4.2020

8 JUST THAT IMBECILE AND HIS MATES To Americans on the Day of General Soleimani’s Funeral Guiltless souls should never worry. Pure hearts are portions of God, Loved and adored and held so dear, not to fear God’s dreadful rod. Just culprits and their partakers should be startled when they see That stick of God’s justice and wrath in the hands of a death squad. 5

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Just that self-righteous imbecile and his mates should be chastised. Those blockheads and murderous thugs should wait for this fatal prod Who destroyed our entire region, beheaded thousands of souls, Guiltless children, men, and women they beastly trampled and trod. It’s the slaughterers of people who should be sent straight to hell And that philistine president, that simpleton, insane, odd, His partakers, too, everywhere, in your homeland and abroad, The seeds of the same begetter, the fiendish beans in a pod. He shall be made an example, this unbalanced, silly sod, And his colleagues who over all world conventions ride roughshod. 1.6.2020

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TO INTERLOPERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST1

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Back yonder, when I was a boy, over sixty years ago, A haughty sergeant, drunk a bit, big as a strong buffalo, Yet nimble too, strolled down our street in a cheerful afternoon Together with some friends of his to spin a yarn very soon. Passing by a decent lady he had uttered something bad Which poured out the neighborhood men into the street wild and mad. Truly entertaining it was to watch the arrogant guys Seeming to be lofty eagles but just vultures born of lies Under those angry fists and feet whining below on the ground Pleading in utter misery beaten and pounded and bound. A dad who was a carpenter requested his child to fetch A spade handle! Now it was time for them all to lay and stretch The sergeant so that they might thrust, before me, a bystander, The wooden pole into the hole of the conceited gander.2 We sure are already awake and well know how your “brand-new And so beautiful equipment”3, one hundred and thirty, too, Of your thugs perished in minutes in Ain al-Asad. We come To the table to talk to men. Bullies’ tongue is fist and thumb. It’s you who are so fast asleep that know nothing of the hour You and your base turned into heaps of dust in that ghastly shower Which has been kept hidden from you up to this very moment. With thugs and bullies one comes not to peace and to agreement. When you can wipe out a country’s infrastructure in three days, As you claim, why are you frightened of it and why all these plays? When it’s nothing why do you fear its hypothetical arms? Why all this fuss and what need to all these illusive alarms? 1.23.2020

10 LAST WORDS To General Soleimani Forty Days after His Martyrdom The sleeping conscience of the West has not come to know to date That the ISIS which you destroyed, that epitome of hate, 1. In response to a British illiterate saying: “I know your angry over the generals, assassination, but living in a dream world of revenge, won’t help your cause, Weigh up the facts, America could wipe out the Iranian infrastructure within 3 days without even putting

feet on the ground, it’s a war you cannot win, wake up, come to the table, only way while there’s time”. 2. See D. H. Lawrence’s “The American Eagle”. 3. The American president’s infamous boast a few days before Ain-al-Assad Operations

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Was a joint product of its States, Saʽudis and Zionists And won’t wake up but in a war sure to happen not too late. 5

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This hell to pay will usher in a new era free of plots By West and its local traitors. Time will tell if we just wait. Treacherous sheikhs, kings, and that foul illegal usurper, too, All put up by the Westerners, will have too much on their plate. The empty-skulled brutes could not see once martyred you would hold out Harder against their unlawful, evil presence at the gate. That you’d drive them out to heaven, with countless men behind you, Was sure what they could not foresee and they could not calculate. Just an ineluctable war will decide the region’s fate. We will follow your lofty path. It’s time to fish or cut bait. 2.4.2020

11 ONWARD! To American Protesters Onwards towards that open air we’re to breathe! It’s time for us our clenched fists to unsheathe And with the rage we’ve swallowed we now seethe!

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We should batter the roof of this vast jail Down on this global dog until its tail We cut and reach the fresh air to inhale. Its barking puppies we should never heed. Mercy on them on the earth is indeed But mercilessness to the sheep. Proceed!

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This vicious dog that has shattered the dreams Of regal great souls1 and gone to extremes Should be chained with all its puppet regimes. This wrathful river that shall overthrow Despotic palaces as a last blow Is our age-old festered, deferred dream flow.2 1. See Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Slave’s Dream”.

2. See Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” (also entitled “A Dream Deferred”).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To a Lunatic Reluctant to Clear out 17

To behave as humans they had much time Which they wasted and never quit their crime. Now they’ll have nowhere to hide but in slime.

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We shall not stop before we reach our aim, To raise a new flag free of free world’s blame, Purged of a long life of slaughter and shame. 6.15.2020

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TO A LUNATIC RELUCTANT TO CLEAR OUT1

As donkeys unwilling to leave the green pastures they graze in Never let one force them rearwards into their stable by chin Respectfully but would rather enter headlong eagerly, So did you desire as a fool the last nail in your coffin. 5

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You imbecile, and your partners, shall sure fall foul of our hands Even if you ever escape your homeland’s law by the skin Of your teeth. We shall seize and lynch you, and them, as examples To the world even if you hide in oceans, you vile bumpkin! That shall teach the noble people not to pick out on the globe Such feces as a drawing card, such a troll, such a goblin. It is so sad that a nation replete with renowned scientists Knows no better and greater fools than epitomes of sin, Takes cunning for brain and instead of minds as sharp as a pin Prefers a backward lunatic all filth without and within! 1.8.2021

13 THREE BRONX CHEERS FOR THESE PRESIDENTS To American Protesters Let them go on with puppetry and think our life is a game Or a gambling scene where they win at the cost of our dear name, Just to heap wealth or fix their steps in more future collusion, Boasting of serving poor people, seeking to reach their own aim. 1. Donald Trump, the USA eccentric President from 2017-21

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Let others sleep or clown around. We know who he had in mind Who first introduced Republic1 — not these fools who have no shame, Not lawyers, or politicians, or dealers, sunk in the ditch Of legal fraud and truthful lies, our dignity to defame. With these seekers of private wealth in the name of their nation This fallen world shall not prosper; it shall sure burst into flame. True devoted scholars we need to rely on native means, Not robbers looking for riches outside their own inland frame. Let’s not take part in these fool games. They are not the clowns they claim. Once we are fooled, for four odd years ourselves we shall have to blame. 10.23.2020

14 A BRIEF PROLOGUE TO DOOMSDAY No more civility! For now, before that historic doom, To fathomless, dark perdition let’s hurl their bald-faced bitches2. For such filthy creatures on earth there ought to be left no room.

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These shameless global terrorists that in quest of dream riches Have settled in the Middle East for almost a hundred years Now with Heaven’s sure assistance we shall cast into ditches. They ascribe to us their own name and the sleeping world that hears Approves of their barefaced slaughters — regrettably — and terrors. No more tolerance! Let’s show them what then in both hemispheres

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Real terror is! World’s simpletons do not see the grave errors In the nuclear conventions. They have lost a dearest horse But ignore the beast and look for its saddle. What peace-carers! Arms are deemed bad but who on earth has ever exerted force Against the red-handed butchers who possess them and use them? No more delay! Mercy on them shall surely lead to remorse. 11.29.2020

1. See Plato’s Republic. 2. Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Donald Trump,

Benj amin Netanyahu, and Arab petty puppets

15 A BULLY

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A bully is a criminal caught red-handed in Japan,1 Vietnam,2 Afghanistan, Iraq; a culprit or a marked man Who entitles only himself to missiles, putting a ban On possessing them by others; and try as much as you can To put into his empty skull with your best-laid scheme and plan That he is wrong, he won’t perceive. You should only weigh and scan All ways to find one to teach him a lesson for his life span. 1.26.2020

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TO EMANUEL GROSSI3 Mistah Grossi, before you try to scent the air with your smell And chew the cud of your bosses with your bondage tinkling bell Make sure you know we kicked them out over forty years ago And we’ll smash their foul mouth again if they do not stop their yell. 5

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In case you are something that counts and act of your own free will Ask what measures your agency has taken to break the spell So far on earth and who has nukes but does not bow to the rules.4 Stop shamelessness! Call your own boss, you Zionist, a rebel. We signed the treaty you tore up while we too could not consent, As your occupier regime5 whose defiance you don’t quell Although it has such bombs for sure and ours is your illusion.6 Shut up! Don’t profane the word peace! Be free! Yourself do not sell! We shall smash your filthy legs if you and your foul personnel Dare to land on our soil again. Iran is not your hotel! 12.14.2020

17 NO COMPROMISE To Our Delegation in Vienna Who on earth has ever talked with wild beasts who don’t understand A human tongue? You should only give them the back of your hand. 1. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed with the USA’s nuclear bombs 2. In a prolonged war (1954-1975) between the USA and North Vietnam 3. Head of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Inspectors

4 & 5. Zionist Regime 6. The countries possessing nuclear bombs with the numbers of their bombs in 2020: Russia 6375; USA 5800; China 320; France 290; UK 215; Pakistan 160; India 150; Zionist Regime 90; North Korea 40; Total 13,440

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Why do you call yourselves grown-ups when you can’t ask these blockheads To first wash the blood off their hands before you they reprimand? 5

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The global life has turned into a nightmare since World War Two Only for the nuclear bombs of their rude, self-righteous band Who considers its own foul filth the legal heir of the earth, All the countries across the globe its inherited homeland. Why do you think they are mature and will abide by their word? Don’t you know by what hypocrites ISIS was produced and planned? As a prerequisite for talks, they have to destroy their nukes Otherwise, both they and we know their castle is built on sand. Just keep aside. Leave it to us to blast this snake’s poison gland. We will sure be good for nothing if we don’t blow their puff stand. 4.16.2021

18 APOCALYPSE Nothing shall save you from the flames. Sizzling, you’ll flee to and fro, Remorseful of your former greed which bought you that rue and woe. Your faiths and sciences, arts, or crafts shall not avail. You’ll excrete All your past joys. Alas, too late this at last you’ll come to know! 5

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Amidst the instants in the flares which last each like an era You shall not see the seeds of lies you all your lives had to sow; Nor shall they know their begetters. Strangers shall be the kinsmen Who entertained one another as if thousand years ago. What you gleaned out of crookèdness at the cost of your dear lives Shall melt with you and drip into the soiled earth of yours below. Naught shall remain of you devils. Your filth perished, new creatures Shall arrive to take your places, a new dog and pony show! You knew not the aim of living. Wait for the last burning blow To make a myth of you on earth: Here today, gone tomorrow. 2.26.2020

19 AN INFANTILE MEMORY I woke up. I was all alone. I burst to sobs when I saw My mother and elder brother had not returned from the law. I recalled the harsh verbal fight and our rude neighbor’s insults While in my mother’s arms I watched and waited for the results. 5

On all fours I got to the door, leant against it on tiptoe, But the knob was a bit higher, ah, about an inch or so. I cried and cried for I knew not how my mom fared at the time And the handle was a mountain too high then for me to climb.

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It was late summer. It had rained when I had been fast asleep, And I’d been born just in that spring! Anyway, I had to weep And sob myself to sleep again to wake up later once more To try to reach the mountaintop, to fall asleep by the door. 6.30.2015

20 A CHILDHOOD PLAY Once in childhood, when I was eight, in a summer afternoon We played and did so many things and we were over the moon. We constructed roads and bridges, and a river too, with mud, Which meandered round the edges of our fields with its nice flood. 5

In the evening when our parents called us for supper and rest, The boys destroyed all we had made wildly as in a contest. Quite like armies devastating a place before they retreat, They trampled everything madly under their small jealous feet.

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The indelible impression this childish act left on me Did turn all my life upside down and never set my mind free. I preferred solitude to play afterwards and reading books Either at home or in nature, in the mountains or by brooks. Furthermore, it so undermined my thought that I set aside The real life and doubted the world as a pessimist and sighed.

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Later I read Khayyam’s quatrains wherein he used to complain About the way God breaks the pots he has made as if in vain. Those quatrains and Russell’s concept of paradox showed me more That all we do is but playing and the world a playthings store. 3.18.2011

21 TO ELIOT Horror?1 Oh, yes! Exactly. You were absolutely right. Now I feel, in this vanity, the hollowness, the fright, Of your never-ending midnight in the midst of daylight. 4.16.2014

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LOVE OR LONELINESS2

Yes, we’re mountains, all together yet alone, From foot to crown of rock and with hearts of stone. Unmoved by all, moving none, we’re on our own. 5

To this song on the way of love that you hear I’ve listened too for an age, year after year, And have shed tears as from an arrow or spear. I don’t beg for love now that I’m old and grey, Melted away in solitude, but I say, Like the waters, one by one we drift away. 1.31.2013

23 MEN’S STING The skin pricked, eyes fill with the tears which instantly vaporize. The blood, too, stops and the hole is no more seen for its small size. By no means is the pain so great as to cause loud shouts and cries. 1. See Kurtz’s final words toward the end of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness alluded to by T. S. Eliot in the epigraph to his “Hollow Men”. 2. Composed while still listening to «The Way of Love» by the late Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum which I listened to in solitude shedding

tears when I was a teenager, and having in mind Matthew Arnold’s poem “To Marguerite — Continued”, W. B. Yeats’s poems “When You are Old” and “The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Waters”, as well as a poem by the late Iranian poet Ahmad Shámloo

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This is all a dead needle does. A bee’s sting differs a bit. Though the wound is invisible, the tears in our eye show it; Our wailing goes on, we run, stop, writhe, lie down, roll, stand and sit. May no one ever be bitten by a scorpion or a snake! The venom hits the heart at once and then our life is at stake. The whole part round the stung point swells. We’re driven mad by the ache!

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The victims then die once for all or they are cured right away. None falls prey to paralysis to suffer day after day As the consequence of snakebite. We die or, treated, we stay. I am dumb to describe men’s sting since I’m benumbed by its pain. I just say it cripples for life and it renders one’s life vain. Though we breathe, we’re dead and no more can we rise to live again. 4.4.2012

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You’re a man and thus forgetful, like all others of your kind, Of this long since proven fact that a good man is hard to find. Were you not so, you would not need to be prodded all the time To follow the example of all those donkeys that reclined To take the same path once again into the big pits on which They had fallen; you’re not wiser; duller than dull is your mind. What do you seek in company that you lack in solitude? Don’t you remember what made you stay in and why you’ve confined Yourself for these two long decades in your lone and friendless room? Leave the hurtful fiends and their wrongs. It’s better to be resigned To the griefs of sad loneliness than to the brutalities Of the uncultivated herd, uncultured and unrefined. How long have you to fool yourself and to their mischief be blind? Oh, how much can your heart contain? Leave them and their arts behind. 4.25.2013

25 AN IMPLORATION Praise is due to you only, Lord, for all your helps in my life. This petty puppet is ready. Cut its strings with your kind knife.

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Put it back in your old toy box there to rest its worn out bones. Rid it of its lifelong fatigue and graciously end its strife.

5

Note I’ve stored thirteen thousand dollars for my funeral at last After sixty odd years of strict, wearisome hunger and fast In this vast wilderness of ours where manliness is to rob The blind of their sticks. O dear Lord! I’m exhausted and downcast. 5.25.2013

26 THE DEW BESEECHING THE SUN Rise and raise me to that bosom wherefrom I was dropped last night. Take this weighty gloom off my back. It suits men. It’s their birthright. Let them live as long as they wish to thicken, to fossilize, To take away each other’s hats and one another to slight. 5

10

This one night on their noxious earth is more than enough for me. Wake up please as soon as you can and end my desperate plight. How can a creature made of dust know what a drop of love is Who lives on lies, lust, and bloodshed and has learned only to fight? O burning hand of God’s mercy, come up soon, I am not strong, And save me from this trampling race, transgressing and impolite, That treads on whatever exists proudly and with all its might. Save me from this two-footèd brute that is stuffed with filth and spite. This life on earth after midnight becomes man. It’s not my bite. Let me fly to the height of sky into the heaven’s bright light. 5.4.2013

27 TO THE STILLBORN Why you so refuse to join us is as plain to me as day. You disdain our filth and false light and would rather always stay In the heaven that has no dawn to be followed by our dusk. You are pure light never dying like us who are dust and clay.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seclusion 25 5

10

While we pretend we give you life, we just bury you alive, Imprison you in this boundless, cold dungeon where men all pray Night and day for peace and release from the hell that they have made Of their world for which there’s no hope nor of love even a ray. We ourselves are dead but don’t know. We’re shadows while you exist. I worship you and your wisdom for sagely keeping away From our follies and rejecting our love that is but hatred. You’re portions of God Eternal. You don’t know death or decay. I wish I were born as you are. Who knows what I bear today Amid the human looking beasts that tear each other for hay? 3.29.2013

28 SECLUSION Can waiting for death be called life? I’m living so, if not dead. I’ve driven all concepts of love and friendship out of my head. Though in the past I wept a lot, now I’ve turned so stone-hearted That for nothing in the whole world even one teardrop I shed. 5

10

I’d not like to see you again, men and women, young or old. I’ve not laughed for twenty-odd years, nor have I slept in a bed, All due to your kindness, you brutes. Guzzle and gulp! I still fast! Half this period I’ve not eaten and mostly I’ve had just bread. I pass my life in solitude. The time I was among you I but suffered, bore fatal wounds, I swallowed blood, and I bled. No more do I have faith in you! Deceive and rob each other! Put your traps in other places! For your own likes your snares spread! From what I’ve encountered in life and from what in books I’ve read, I’m sure your precious gift for me is no less than harm and dread. 10.26.2014

29 ANOTHER JUDAS Fastened to the stake to be burned, Saint Joan was totally calm.

26 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5

10

She did not care who had come there For merry-making round her. To her they did not count at all: They were just pebbles and clays. She only once shed bitter tears And that was when she noticed, Among those gathered around her, A pretending faithful friend Who clapped her hands in cheerfulness — Which burnt her to the marrow. 2009

30 SELF-SACRIFICE For Ungrateful Swines I Should Not Have Helped out Do the unmanly folk who do their marital deeds this night With the organ you once lent them ever know how you now fight The damn chill that has confounded your ears, with nothing to eat, Struggling through as you always are though enfeebled yet upright? 5

10

No, not for sure! They have one aim, to get to the boiling point, Then fall asleep, wake up at dawn, shoot once more before daylight. Borrowed members are too busy to remember a dullard Who has granted them all they have, the light, the might, and delight. There is no time for them to lose. They may get up and find out Their lease has run out before long and they’re fallen from their height. How should they care about you then? They’re riding their joyful wives. You’d not have begged for your own hat had you ever kept it tight.1 Self-sacrifice becomes the Knight1 who bought the filthy men’s slight. You’re only a lousy human. Bend under your woeful plight! 2.18.2015

31 MY BIRTHDAY Murmur your gloom though it’s not liked and it wrongs your friends’ delight. You cannot hide your sad darkness under a truly false light. 1. See “To an Imaginary Friend”.

2. Jesus Christ

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To a Honeybee 27

Now that people are all cleaning their houses before new year, You are buried beneath the dust of former years without cheer. 5

Though you need to be twice as glad on account of New Year’s Day As well as the day you were born, you greet them both in dismay. There’s none to express good wishes to you but your late sister Whose last card is before your eyes renewing your old fester1.

10

No one of those old friends of yours knows even you are alive Who, once in your happy old days, used to gather round your hive. Do not grieve! you will die someday! Far greater than you are dead. But don’t swallow your grievous pains; they will calm once they are said. 3.4.2011

32 TO A HONEYBEE From my early twenties I taught, when I was happy and free, At some state universities up to the age of thirty. But some fools and fake professors,2 for the reasons that they knew, Expelled me form academies and uprooted my life tree. 5

10

I knew nothing other than books. I had spent my time on them, Not on learning, say, how to drive, or to cook, or to make tea. Thus, I stayed in and translated and had a few books published The royalties on which could not my simple life guarantee. I could not marry and have kids. So I write just these verses In the hope that they may remain, as my children, after me Although those very wickèd souls still hurt me from time to time Even in my den and deprive me of the least joy and glee. Fly to the sweet, varied flowers in nice gardens, honeybee! There’s but bitter thorn on this page you see on my trembling knee. 4.26.2013

1. Slant rhyme used as a Poetic License 2. In an n th grade Iranian university I was sent by force by my foolish family the

faculty members of which were generally illiterates with highly tribalist tendencies and hostile towards non-natives

33 TO MY MOTHER So you call those whom you have buried alive The dead feeding on the living to survive? 6.13.2013

34 ONE YEAR OLDER On My Having Arrived at the Age of Fifty-Seven Though I am now one year older, my heart is the same old one: Strange to reason, waiting for love, a lover of joy and fun, And still far less wise than donkeys that fall in a pit just once, Not twice, despite blockheadedness though they be under the gun. 5

10

It’s only my mind that has changed and grown darker than before, So dark that none will brighten it, even the world’s God or sun. By so much more new treason, spite, viciousness, harm, phoniness, Inequity, wrong, villainy, and so on it is undone. The silent fight between the two within me has no effect But my wildness and more hair loss; after all, each is my son. Like all others, I’d be happy if I had just one of them. I am helpless and do not know whereto on earth I should run. My child within looks for a friend, like before, trusts everyone; My wounded inner old man seeks the life of a monk or nun. 3.25.2013

35 ARRIVING AT THE AGE OF SIXTY How I always dreaded the end, much liked to perpetuate My thirst for you in sweetest hope, and rejoiced to stay and wait! Life was the wish to get to you, the longed-for vital water Once reached and drunk, my long journey would afterwards terminate. 5

And now you come at the right time from the spring with a pitcher! My ureters and urethra are almost blocked, my prostate Is inflamed, too, due to the cold of this freezing, bleak dungeon. Welcome, long since awaited love, at last to allay my weight! 28

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Happy New Year? 29

10

So dilapidated and wrecked, alacritous to depart, I’m thankful for you, O sole truth, showing up thus at the gate To prove there is a cherished soul among the two-leggèd beasts That smear the earth, pursue evil, are the seeds of lies and hate. I did not wait these sixty years in vain for you who, though late, Come to close my heavy eyelids1 by the decree of our fate. 3.19.2016

36 HAPPY NEW YEAR? I don’t complain against strangers. All these pains I owe to you. May you die early or live long to suffer each hour anew Unbearable ailments and aches far worse than these I endure So that you may know what the hell you beasts have tossed me into! 5

10

In these final days of the year when you shop for New Years’ Day And plan to go on vacation, what all nights and days I do Is writhe around in agony on the floor and curse the day I came into this world of lies to which you so stick like glue. Born on the unblest New Years’ Day, I’m doomed to remain hungry For a few days and find nothing, even hard, dry bread to chew.2 Thanks past measure, my grateful friends, who bit the hand that fed you And you my malignant pupils first to whom this is all due. You rendered my efforts fruitless and the toils that I went through. May your dreams and wishes, you brutes, never in your lives come true! 3.4.2015

37 YOU I wonder why I do not die so as to get rid of you. I have passed all my life so far standing in the death’s long queue And borne jostles, shoves and pushes, but still my turn does not come. I am bored of forgiving you and forgetting what you do. 1. Here, at the moment people die their eyes are closed and their limbs straightened by those round them.

2. On this day and some days after it people are on vacation and no restaurant is open.

30 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5

10

I have never seen such harmful and malignant things as you. May I soon leave this filthy sphere and you perish with me, too! Godly preachers, godless creatures, of yours are like your own world — This very old guest-killing place you hurriedly rush into. Your untutored and learnèd ones equally sow and reap wind. With your false truths and truthful lies, your fake love as well, I’m through. I am fed up with what you are and your McLuhan village That has nothing for you to chew but to which you stick like glue. Despite a mote on your vast plain, I’m not, like you, just mildew. I don’t heed you any more. Laugh, and let your world laugh at you. 4.16.2012

38 TO AN IMAGINARY FRIEND Now every cranny, too, is closed, as all the doors were before, And in this ocean-like dungeon I’m doomed not to reach the shore. The paper boat of poesy I made to escape from here Is sinking and of no avail is its childish wingèd oar. 5

10

How I once was living like all, full of hopes for tomorrows, Walked among people, talked with them and my blithe soul knew no sore Till a hypocrite’s son1 appeared, behaved like a true artist, Took all I had gleaned in my life and destroyed me to the core! You that suppose you’re still a friend, remember me in my jail And if you ever chance to pass by rivers’ murmur or roar, Or get soaked in the spring torrents or rest on the green grasses, Share them all in your mind with me and think of me and my gore. I still go on enduring all the world for me has in store Until my smoke soars to the sky and I’m gone forevermore. 3.31.2013

39 HOLD OUT Why do I tell the same old tale? All I know is but this one. My lifelong night has not an end. There’s no rising of the sun. 1. See “On a Treacherous Former Student” and “Self-Sacrifice”.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hope! 31

When you people of countless kinds move around during the day, Here in my night I hear no sound — laugh or cry. I have no fun. 5

10

In the sun, all men breathe and grow, life is colorfully rich, But all is black and white — or gray — for a recluse or a nun. Their heart of darkness in the midst of silence beats so loudly That of diurnal cadences which surround you they hear none. Time that goes with you hand in hand, backward, forward, here and there, Stays with me still with no motion, endless though it’s not begun. My darkling throat resounds the same gloomy, lifeless and dull note. Each time in my sad yarn a new wistful episode is spun. O mote! stop this futile wailing by which nothing can be won. It’s not manly. Try to bear up though you’re shattered and undone. 4.15.2012

40

HOPE1

My old goat, don’t cry or sigh! Be steadfast; you must not die. The spring comes soon and the sky will be blue and this shall pass. Good things come to those who wait. Together with a fair mate You’ll enjoy a lovely fate. You’ll have melon and green grass. 5

Out of the pen, on the plain, you’ll forget your current pain, No longer will you complain. You’ll be happy with your lass. In the fields you’ll bound and fart together with your sweetheart, Among many a blithe hart, many a sheep, cow and ass.

10

Just don’t worry. Don’t be sad! You’ll soon certainly be glad. Sacred love will drive you mad. These hard, bad days will soon pass. 1.29.2014

1. Based on a popular ironic Persian proverb (“Boz’æk næ’mi:r bæ’haar mi:’aad” literally

translating to “Keep alive, O little goat; the spring shall come!”)

41 FOOL YOURSELF To Myself Stay and wait and hope forever, toil and labor and endeavor, Say the fish is fresh whenever you catch it,1 and fool yourself. Stay to add more years to the years of your futile life passed in tears Among two-footed beasts and fears and live on and fool yourself. 5

Stay for a thousand years on earth. From the time you were given birth Till death you’ll find nothing of worth. Stay on and still fool yourself. Stay to lose everything you own and then night and day moan and groan With no one around, all alone. Go on and still fool yourself.

10

Stay, poor fistful of skin and bone, and still seek that ancient unknown To none its face has ever shown. Stay and wait and fool yourself. Stay and postpone ending all this with arsenic. Wait for the bliss, In your trampled dreams, of a kiss and for ever fool yourself. Stay to be stabbed more in the back, and be put again on the rack, By another mean mac or jack. Aye, stay and still fool yourself. 12.26.2013

42 SPRING IN THE AIR You’ll come to all but me, O spring, and as always once more you’ll bring To them your scents, hues, birds that sing, warmth and pleasure and everything Each needs to live like a real king under your ancient azure ring. 5

My seared leaves you’ll again forget with your soft, balmy rains to wet, And will leave in the world’s doomed net of harm and hurt and fear and threat. Me you’ll only wear out and fret and never graciously indebt. I smell you, though, and wait for you to drive me mad with longings new And make of me a wondering Jew with a heart all laden with rue For this life that’s a drop of dew which disappears so soon from view.

10

Do as you wish. Leave me forlorn. I am already used to scorn. My lot’s not a rose but her thorn, to wail, to moan, to weep, to mourn. My blank garden do not adorn! Of all sorts of hope leave me shorn. 1. Start all over again! It’s never too late!

32

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ah, Nature! 33

A bird forgotten in the snare with nobody around to care Should helplessly stay there and stare and wear away when it can’t tear The ugly noose, loathsome, unfair, and only bear all in despair. 2.12.2013

43 AH, NATURE! Did I ever ask for money or the land of milk and honey? Why should I not feel the sunny and scented farms in the spring? Did I ever care about gold? When did I try to break the mold? Why is my lot hunger and cold and a life-long bite or sting? 5

10

Whom on earth did I ever shove? When did I shoot at peace’s dove? Why am I condemned from above to be away from pure air? I who was born in the mountains and raised beside forests fountains Have not heard the sweet song of rains for years in this hideous lair! Absence from the murmuring streams and the grace of noontide sunbeams Has darkened both me and my dreams and driven me to despair. I’m sure I will not see again the nature and its lovely train Of sounds and sights and fields of grain. It’s too cruel and unfair. 3.6.2011

44 PENITENCE To Myself in My Last Days

5

10

To be clean in the prime of life, in heart and mind, is God’s way; Yet don’t worry. Fall on the ground on your knees and start to pray. It’s not too late. Just wash your soul though it’s tainted to the core. Set it then like a blackest stone on your sinful body’s tray, And take it to the Forgiver to turn it into a gem, To hallow it, and you, again and blow onto you His ray. Once you’re purged of your heart’s glass shards, freed from your wearisome night, Promise, and keep it too, to shine, not to stain your brightest day. Now wear your immaculate robe, divorce your unclean concerns, Reside at His heavenly door and, during the time you stay There at the point, don’t be tempted by His arch-foe once again.

34 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reject Satan’s offer to ride its donkeyback. No heed pay To its herd. There is no more time to waste and to while away. Turn to God in these last few days. Obey Him. Do not delay. 4.30.2013

45

A HUMBLE TRIBUTE1 TO DR. SAÏD FATEMI2

No one can describe you aptly. Men like you are few and rare. The languages we people speak mirror our worlds everywhere, Reflect our own good and bad traits, our various attributes. You are beyond our words or worlds. We’re humans and thus may err. 5

10

Whoever considers you great for your closeness to a man Who was so great in his own way3 is totally unaware Of your grandeur the like of which we can’t detect in others, Belittles you unwittingly, his judgment is most unfair. You, among all in our own time, only with your brave uncle4, That immortal, devout hero, people should ever compare And that lioness5 who raised you in her chaste and noble lap, The stout lady who turned a king’s life into a worst nightmare. May you live long, nothing your health and your mirth ever impair, Your paradise of loyalty6 be free of trouble and care! 11.19.2015

46 TO PROFESSOR MINOO VARZEGAR On My Shock at the Sad News of Dr Fatemi’s Decease Dressed in mourning in a photo I came across at daybreak, You broke the rueful, bitter news and struck me with shock and ache. Would that I were dead and knew not of this loss of a great sage 1. This is merely a token of a former student’s faithfulness to a most distinguished professor of French and comparative literature, an outstanding author, journalist, statesman, politician and social activitist, among others, and, above all, a highly chivalrous soul and heroic athlete, though he is needless of such a humble homage. It should not, however, be taken as a document of attachment to his political stance to which hereby any affiliation

is disavowed. 2. Dr. Saïd Fatemi, interpreter and the secretary of Dr. Mossaddeq’s staff at the Hague tribunal 3. Dr. Mohammad Mossaddeq 4. The martyred Dr. Hossein Fatemi, deputy prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs in Mossaddeq’s cabinet 5. Dr. Saïd Fatemi’s saintly mother 6. Alluding to Dr. Minoo Varzegar, Dr. Saïd Fatemi’s devoted wife or guardian angel

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Professor Minoo Varzegar 35

5

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30

35

Who was far greater than his peers, kept up to his ripe old age Calm and smiling, pleased with the world, strong in body and in mind, Sympathetic, benevolent, pure-hearted, merciful, kind. The son of a brave lioness, a Zeinab1 of her own time, Had surely to keep reticent about the inhuman crime Of the Shah’s rogues and ruffians who blinded one of his eyes And stabbed his mother who shielded her brother from savage guys. In dark days of royal era, when your colleagues passed him by Hardly with a briefest greeting lest they be seen by a spy I noticed who he truly was and how lowly they were all: Basest creatures of short stature fearful of their meanest fall! By the stairways he spoke to me as a father, scholar, friend, Athlete, author, and a statesman and his time he would thus spend Till your classes ended at last and as an innocent boy He concluded what he had said, left me, and neared you in joy. When he used to shake hands with me, how he raised me from the ground A foot and a half, oh my God! How athletic, robust, sound! The first book in Greco-Roman mythology in Iran Was his which both in my studies and my life I came upon. He, and you, dearest professor, did not spend a single dime Of what you received for teaching, unlike beggars of the time — Gave all away to the needy as once some waiters told me. You had not taken your degrees to make money, I could see. I well know how he has once stopped his car in a busy street To reach and save an old woman, one disabled in the feet. Finding out that her eyesight is also impaired, he takes her To doctors, has her eyes treated, and chooses then to transfer The old woman to the country. Such a hero to the core Deserves the immortality of all the heroes of yore. We mortals or rank and file foam just for a very short while, Like waves, and then into boundless and fathomless seas we pile.2 We die with the fire we kindle in a lover’s inflamed breast; He is an ever-shining sun that neither sets nor knows west! 12.27.2019 1. Her Excellency Zeinab (PBUH) is the stouthearted sister of Imam Hussein (PBUH), the third Imam in Shi’ism, who delivers bravely a long speech before the caliph whose army

has martyred his brother, and fearlessly defends his brother’s ideals 2. See Matthew Arnold’s “Rugby Chapel”, lines 58-72.

47 A NOTE I bloomed and danced and waited for you, love, Until I was beheaded by a gust. My stalk and petals were too thin to stand. You could save me were you here by my side. 3.24.2011

48 WHERE WERE YOU?

5

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On my left the full silver circle of the moon Just risen in the east And on my right the mellow sun about to swoon Provided a rare feast But, without you, I shunned them like the sun at noon And, ah, I cared the least. The music of the ocean that broke on gray rocks On lengthy moonlit nights, And the cool summer breezes near the eagle flocks On far-off mountain heights, Without you were like worthless bits of broken crocks, Devoid of all delights! The best of foods, fruits and drinks tasted just as mud, Disgusting and loathsome, The murmur of a stream was the roar of a flood And of a grating drum. Without you, I did not enjoy a blooming bud. I felt utterly glum. I never knew who you were or who you would be Yet I always missed you! In foul weathers I wished you were near me to see How I was feeling blue. You would certainly set my exhausted soul free Whether you were a Jew, A Christian or a Muslim or an infidel. But now naught can avail. 36

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stars and Butterflies 37

30

35

Weary and old, leading a life in boundless hell, Or just living on bail, I’ve lost all I once had due to what I can’t tell.1 I’m dead as a doornail. Farewell, O world! You took back from me all but pain; Ha ha! No pain, no gain? Did I not toil for you night and day all in vain? Why did you crush my brain And pay me back with your fetter, shackle, and chain? I’d better not complain! 7.21.2011

49

STARS AND BUTTERFLIES2

Looking at the winter sky, All the short-lived butterflies I have lost throughout my days I regain in far-off stars! 9.8.2010

50 AN ETERNAL MOMENT OF LOVE My thirsty soul! Rest your parched lips On those of your never found love And drink your fill. 3.25.2011

51 A PAIN ENGRAVED ON SOUND

5

A pain I bear within my heart Which only music can impart. Unspoken it melts down the bone And it burns the tongue if I moan; Yet I complain once again. 1. See “A Pain Engraved on Sound” and “To a Honeybee”.

2. Butterflies signify brevity of life and stars inaccessibility.

38 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10

The happy old days of my youth The ill-natured, fools, the uncouth Wasted and left me the old age And an unsheltered narrow cage In the heavy snow and rain.

15

There was a time in my heyday When I was halted on the way By a girl who kissed me and ran Or a lady who wished to scan My eyes. Ah, how beauties wane!1

20

I was too shy to tell someone I loved them. In the evening sun Now sitting, I recall the grains Of harvests swept by floods on plains Like hungry birds gone insane.

25

My pickled youth nobody buys In the markets where each man cries His fresh cucumber or carrot. I’m really sick as a parrot And well know I live in vain.2

30

Certainly life is great for some, But it’s the death I most welcome That sets a sweet smile on my lips, Ends the world’s distasteful, sharp whips, And frees me from lifelong chain.

35

Were I skilled as a reed player, I’d engrave, layer by layer, My bleeding soul not upon gold, But on sound, for you to behold; I’d never be under strain! 7.5.2013

1. Echoing W. B. Yeats’s “The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner” and “The Old Men

Admiring Themselves in the Water” 2. See Thomas Hardy’s “No Buyers”.

52

ON MY BLINDNESS1

In days of yore when the fruits were carried to the market place On the backs of beasts of burden, many of them you could face Round you everywhere in the streets, in avenues and bazaars Quite in the same way now you see hundreds of thousands of cars. 5

10

15

When a male donkey detected a fair one of his own kind, From afar, he started to bray but some boys — rude, unrefined — Threw stones at him and made his bray, raised lustfully, unfinished. The poor beast’s will was so suppressed, his desire thus diminished. They did the same to a rooster and his cock-a-doodle-do When the heated fowl raised his head and cleared his throat to call, too, A nice hen to his cozy nest for mating during the day. Thus this fared no better than that and was, like him, held at bay. I too still had many burdens in my humble life to bear And still sought for a suiting mate and had much to write and tear. Damn you, naughty world, who darkened my eyes like those bad small boys, Left me half-brayed, and deprived me of pleasing sights, precious joys! 2011

53

GOING OUT AFTER TWO DECADES2

I do not know what will happen tomorrow. Will I meet with rogues again like years ago? Will I lose my moustache too while I just go To shave my beard?3 I don’t know. 5

10

Now that I lack my watchful, strong guards of eyes And have no strength to drive away troubling flies, How to bear the deadly stabs of the mean guys? I don’t know, maybe with sighs. All this aside, how to pay for the expense Of surgery which, as I know, is immense 1. Written a few days before I went blind due to cataract 2. Written in the evening on the following day of which I helplessly had to visit a doctor after a year’s delay

3. A Persian adage pointing to a situation in which you lose something more essential when you attempt to achieve something of less importance

39

40 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When for the pairs of glasses I have no pence? That’s why I was on the fence.

15

20

Of course, my friend and my parents are not poor — They have built schools for the needy and he’s pure Though I, too, have once helped him — and I’m so sure If I wished I’d have a cure. If I wished? How did I not? What was so dear As my eye? A truthful sweetheart, it is clear, Nothing else, not heart or life. But all my fear Was of blows far more severe. Ah! I hope it’s not too late and once again I can see rain, not just hear it, and a plain Of sweet flowers and green grasses with no pain, With no strain, fetter, and chain. 4.6.2012

54

TO DR. FARID DÁNESHGAR1

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Our monarch of eloquence2 says, he values a better thing Who has just faced its opposite and seen winter before spring. I underwent two surgeries on my left eye and endured As much pain as all I had borne in my life just to be cured And still to bleed among the thorns of our prickling jungle ills So that perchance I might some day meet among sweet daffodils A friendly face to soothe away the pains of my gaping wound And take me out of this desert on which I am left marooned. In the second operation I was helplessly aware Since I had to look up or down as I was asked to and bear The pain when the lens pierced my eye and then the torn place was stitched. I could not shout or leave the mess into which I had been pitched. In fine, I regained my eyesight after some months just a bit, With the help of lens and glasses, and before my feet was lit. Although I am not ungrateful, nevertheless I should add “The mountain labored but brought forth only a mouse!”3 It was sad. 1. The proficient Iranian ophtlalmologist in the capital and the Western regions

2 Sa‛di in Gulistan (The Rose-Garden) 3 Horace, the ancient Roman poet

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Rebecca 41

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I am truly dumb to thank you for unbolting the shut door To my soul and lighting anew my long dark night like before In few minutes, and sans torture, with your messianic hand. I do not need glasses either to pass on the world’s quicksand. You are not haughty like others; you’re unequalled and unique, As your nice first name signifies, both in manners and technique. If all master their professions and update their knowledge, too, They will serve their God so much more. They’ll be as helpful as you. The fragrance of your renowned musk that permeates everywhere Leaves no room for my crippled words; you are veritably rare Among all your kind counterparts, once again I must declare, In expertise, propriety, as well as pure human care. I’m so sorry, O Solomon, for this humble locust thigh. This is all that a lowly ant can offer you and supply. Now it’s mainly with the right eye you revived that I can see. I’ll always remain as your slave although you have set me free. 12.12.2012

55 TO REBECCA You’re as mild as orange sunbeams in a winter afternoon, As elegant and noble, too, as the silent, modest moon; Yet if a dotard or a chap ever dares to stretch his legs Beyond his rug, you’ll fall on him like a merciless typhoon. 5

10

At the sight of nature’s treasures of rarest odors and hues, Like a rapturous teenager with joy and delight you swoon While unlike ugly-souled women who adorn themselves with gold, To keep beautiful, all the false and fake ornaments you prune. For the worldly riches men seek, you never try to exchange A spectacular sunset scene, a sea breeze, or a sand dune, The friendship which is as sacred as the Logos, the beach rocks, Variegated flowers, the trees, the waves, seagulls, and their tune. May all your paths and life, Becca, with pretty blossoms be strewn! Aye, from evils, harms, and troubles you and your home be immune! 8.5.2015

56 MAN’S LIFE SPAN God created donkey and then said unto it, “From sunrise thou wilt carry burden on thy back To the time when night cometh up and day doth quit, And thou wilt find thy daily food in the haystack. 5

10

15

20

“Wisdom will never be thy lot and thou wilt be In the world for fifty years as a complete ass.” “I agree to be an ass,” it said, “but fifty Is too long. Give me twenty and let my life pass.” He accepted. He then created dog and said, “Thou wilt guard man’s house and be his best, loyal friend. Thou wilt eat what he giveth to thee and be dead After thirty years. Live as a dog till the end!” “Thirty years,” it replied, “will wear away my glee. To lead a doggy life just fifteen will suffice.” God consented and went on to create monkey To add it to His motley world as a sweet spice. To the new creature He said, “Thou wilt jump and swing From tree to tree to serve man as a living toy And amuse him with many an enchanting thing. Monkey around and thy twenty-year life enjoy!” It, too, asked God to reduce its life span to ten, And God accepted and went on to create man, The roof and crown of all the things in His world, then, And the sole intelligent creature in His plan.

25

30

Having made him, He said, “Thou canst be the master Of all on my vast earth in thy twenty-year life.” “It’s short,” man said, “and passeth in a wink faster Than winds before I may reap the crop of my strife. “I love to be a man, of course, but may I ask For those thirty, fifteen, and ten years thy donkey, Dog, and monkey rejected to lessen the task Assigned to each of them? Pray hearken to my plea.” 42

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What Is Man? 43

35

40

God granted them to him. Since then for twenty years Men live like men, and then they marry, work, and bear Burden for thirty years like the beast of long ears And after their children grow up, they go nowhere But stay at home for fifteen years like dogs and eat What they’re given. When they’re old, like monkeys they go From a girl’s house to a boy’s on this or that street For ten years, amuse grandchildren, and leave the show. 9.26.2013

57 WHAT IS MAN? Is man the roof and crown of things? It’s what he claims. It’s a lie! He’s a blood-sucking louse that needs to grow, live, and multiply On others who labor for him but he gets all the credit. Though he thinks he is a phoenix, he’s merely a tiny fly. 5

10

His efforts to immortalize himself by means of art works Prove he knows he’s a moth that dies in the twinkling of an eye. He is the only hypocrite of all beasts that swears by God And wishes to go to heaven while he never wants to die. Which beasts, tell me, philosophize, pretend to be what they’re not? Have you seen among other beasts an informer or a spy? Which beasts have you seen talk of peace and love but spark two world wars? What beast but gentle man tells lies despite his vest and necktie? Poor mote! What a traitor you are! Just a true man can deny His origin and utter these his human race to defy. 4.17.2012

58

SUMMING-UP1

Crude at first, I was baked later, and fully burnt out at last. I carved an idol, worshipped it, and broke it before I passed! 2013 1. Renowned lines from Rumi’s Divan-e Shams (Ghazal 1768) and Mohammad Iqbal’s Message

of the East (122) respectively

59 AH, DO NOT KILL!

5

Do not kill the mosquitoes! They live for a shortest while And life is sweet. Just be clean or use lotion.1 They’ll keep away. 10.26.2013

60 A TRUCKER’S ADVICE TO A SAGE

5

A sage carried, The other day, A lit lantern Under the sun Looking around For a human.2 “I’ve searched the world. Ya shall find none.”3 2009

61

TO SHITLAND DOGS4

Your godly and godless ones are the same. You and your social institutions aim Only to win the dross of your wasteland5 Through tearing up the others without shame. 5

Your lives in your wilderness form a game In which you fools stupidly set aflame All that has been dearly gained in your world: Yourselves and the filth of your race’s name. 1. In spiritual terms too (moral, emotional, political, as well as military) 2. See Rumi’s Divan-e Shams, Ghazal 441, line 14. 3. As written behind some trucks 4. A gang of monsters in disguise scattered among men throughout the world making life

“hideous, and arid, and vile” (Matthew Arnold, “Rugby Chapel”, line 158); from all the inhabitants of the earth only one millionth may veritably be entitled “the roof and crown of things” (Tennyson, “Lotus-Eaters”, line 69). 5. See T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

44

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Our Pots 45

10

15

Though your garbage can you should also blame, It’s your wooden-leggèd logic that’s lame And you stray dogs yourselves, too, that seek bones Among its dead flowers — hungry, untame.1 Hereby, you ancient beasts, I thus rename For your great masterpieces of good fame Throughout your long, peaceful journey of love! And your trash barrel Shitland I proclaim. 3.16.2013

62 IN OUR POTS

5

As some kinds of rice need more time And some kinds less to be well-cooked, And when they’re mixed half of the meal Is thus over- or undercooked, In social pots, like families Or the whole universe of ours, Some are the scapegoats of others. 7.4.2015

63

TO BRINK AND KISHAN2

In this paradoxical world that is at once so good and bad, Some men usefully help others while there’s also a nasty cad3 That always seeks his own interests and victimizes his fellows. It’s only for the likes of you the world still lives and men are glad. 5

No matter what we believe in, God or idols, body or soul, What helps now and will redeem us in the future, I have to add, Is computer and programming — not preaching and good intention Although they are good by themselves and of both of which we have had 1. See the scene toward the end of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in which one of them is rummaging through a rubbish bin, looking for something to chew 2. Brink is a middle-aged man running the sites SevenForums.com and TenForums.com

dedicated to helping the users of Windows 7 and later, Kishan is an eleven-year old boy that has made some extraordinarily helpful freeware for working with Windows 7 and later. 3. A virus maker

46 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10

A lot for hundred thousand years. But as the grains of wheat we take And leave the chaff to animals, science, too, creates an ironclad While it still provides us with ships that aid us in the ways we know. It’s a helpful knife in kitchens, a harming one used by the mad. We, poor preys in the noose of life, can be freed only by a dad Like you, Brink, and Kishan, the nice, brainy, gentle, cultured, good lad. 10.7.2014

64 ADVICE TO LADIES A betraying man is punished by his wife in a strange way In my place that may seem to you nothing more than a cliché. She cuts his organ and leaves him to rue his deed forever While she shows the other men too their fate if they go astray. 5

10

This is not what I mean to raise; it’s brutish and unlawful; Meanwhile, the case I have in mind and would much like to display Differs in that the man is not yours but he is a rapist. Please follow me; pay attention to what I’ll presently say. Men’s Achilles heel is their balls. You have to reach one of them — You can grab both if you are smart — and the pressure you should weigh According to the pain you see in his face, but be wary Not to apply overpressure, till he faints like a damned prey. This comes in handy if you lack the special sprays of today, Like mustard gas, but it’s better since him you won’t harm or slay. 4.22.2013

65

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA1

Don’t curse the night! Kindle a light! 1.26.2014

1. Also attributed to Confucius and regarded as a Chinese proverb. An alternative title

could be “Light against Night”.

66

LOOK AND DESPAIR1

The first cursèd war which broke out between our neighbor and us Put a period to my early, rather carefree, childhood2 thus: Those from our country who dwelt there with native wives and offspring Had to leave behind their households, offices, shops, everything, 5

As nakèdly as we all men enter and exit the stage Now that fate was turning over so mercilessly the page. The richest man around whose stock the whole commerce in that land Had revolved till then was expelled without a dime in his hand.

10

*** In our local radio station, almost some twelve years later, I came across a gentleman who worked as a translator. Seeing me startled at his name, the funny Mr. Tarry, He recounted a pathetic tale so much sad and sorry. He had been a professor then. Arrested in the classroom, He’d been transferred to the police, kept there, as you may assume,

15

With so many more collected in schools, at homes, at the marts, In formal clothes or pajamas to be herded into carts To betake themselves finally to the borderline and flags Among those who sickened and died, all bare footed and in rags.

20

Mr. Tarry and some others had then been saved by a truck Of road construction stained with tar and asphalt out of pure luck. Registry ill-versed officials, seeing him tainted with tar, Here had chosen for him this name quaint and curious and bizarre. Caught discretely, the poor members of families never found One another though you saw them looking forever around

1. Worldly wealth is never deemd bad. Blame worthy is just the greed Which is gratified when our mouths are closed by grave dust and weed.

2. This frustrating lesson I took when I was just twelve years old May transmute all fools’ copper souls, like alchemy, into gold.

47

48 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------25

For their lost ones whom they always hoped to meet by chance some day All in vain till, to my knowledge, they reached old age and went gray.1 *** How many countless times you’ve heard, since you stepped in this old inn, That you go as poor as you come and nothing you’ll ever win,

30

Yet you tear apart each other in the avarice’s queue To gain a little more fodder which you’ll have no time to chew. You’d not leave your zoo as the beasts2 that entered it, so intact, If you saw but this in your life and knew only this one fact. 7.18.2015

67 TRIPLETS Never try to write for two types of men: The ignorant your word’s beyond whose ken And the learnéd needless of what you pen.

5

*** Nobody’s needs the world does ever meet. When we have teeth we find nothing to eat; Once they’re lost, there is so much meat and sweet. *** When single, every Tom, Dick, or Harry Yearns thirstily to find a nice fairy But then advises all not to marry!

10

15

*** Physical features have decisive roles In shaping men’s characters; nosy souls Resemble, as you see, the long-nosed dholes. *** Although he runs faster, a hapless soul Is left behind and does not reach the goal While some do not move but are on a roll! *** 1. The first Iraqi president, and the vice president too, After doomed Saddam resided in our zone and avenue.

2. Asses for sure, just the same ones you are when you first appear, (you good men aside) Not asses evolved into cows the further your end you near.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Dana, My Little Nephew 49

On hypocrites never tend to depend. Those equivocal bitches1 intend just to rend When they pretend they approach to befriend. 4.4.2012

68 TO DANA, MY LITTLE NEPHEW

5

10

Hearken to this bone that was mine and what it sings as a flute — Now that I’m dust — played by the wind like an old Æolian lute. Do not be content with one book; read the works of all good souls From Gilgamesh to the present; never regard, like a mute, The corpus of the ancient myths — Greek, Roman, Eastern, Celtic — Philosophy, and religion just as a forbidden fruit. A modernist strange to the past heritage or traditions Is a traitor. Don’t follow him. He’s an oak that has no root. Read to realize how old Persians borrowed the ancient world’s lore And, when knowledge in dark ages was trampled under the boot Of the church and books were all burned, they returned it to Europe Through the Arabs of the region whom they then began to loot In the Crusades and in exchange for their rebirth they killed them And still went on until my time. The poor them they still did shoot. 3.26.2013

69 IN THE COMPANY OF ZEROES Neither their presence nor absence adds to or subtracts from you.2 Once a problem you share with them, infinite ones will ensue.3 In interaction with them too, you reduce to their value.4 9.3.2015

1. See the short poem “The Hound” by Robert Francis. 2. A + 0 = A; A -- 0 = A

3. A ÷ 0 = ∞ 4. A x 0 = 0

70 A POET

5

10

15

A poet is a god Amidst man’s never-ending viciousness, His ignorance, his selfishness, His worldly riches love; His superiority complex, His friv’lous idleness, His short-sighted outlooks, His narrowness, And shallowness, His perversion, His childish tricks, His inversion of truths. To petty devils he is dead Who ascribe to him their own deaths, Their own deaths of complication, In what their minds excrete. 5.18.2011

71 OF WORDS AND WINDS The dust particles that tarnish the bright mirror of the heart Are roaring waves that rise and foam and upset the apple cart, Then subside, calm down, and perish with no smell, sound, or message Remaining of them on the scene after they headlong depart. 5

10

Of all those who populated or smudged this ancient abode How many do you remember in its long life from the start? Those you know were light particles (not these dull and dead’ning ones) Who will remain up to the end due to the charm of love’s art. It is the voice that lasts for sure, but all we hear is not gold. The rank and file noises we make go with the wind, have no part In the love’s sweetest orchestra that immortalizes us. Heart’s artifacts and stomach’s crafts are forever poles apart. You won’t live to the edge of doom with your misleading, false chart. O tiny mote, no faithful heart you’ll hunt with your pois’nous dart. 4.26.2012 50

72 IN A POETS’ GROUP We’re not like the rest of the world. While others live just to eat We sensitive folk eat to live, to love, and to be complete. Shattered by them, our tender souls have sheltered here to seek peace To warm each other’s frozen hearts with our internal suns’ heat. 5

10

Sure we differ in religion, education, race, and age, Yet we’re alike in honesty and in spirit we’re all neat. We may be hurt by each other due to our different pursuits, But certainly we mean to help one another, not to cheat. Dear fellow, if some keep aloof or some birds fly together, Never suppose you’re not wanted or loved. You are. Don’t retreat. As for me, I’ve got so used to solitude that I prefer To be alone, but know, dear friend, my eye’s pupil is your seat. While others are making money to stuff their bellies with meat, We, fine butterflies, read and write, and live on perfume and sweet. 12.6.2014

73 ARS[E] POETICA When the chemical elements in the things we drink and eat Interact with one another after we feel quite replete To produce blood and energy, we are harassed by gasses And waste matters in our bellies and see we need to excrete. 5

10

In our everyday encounters with what surrounds us in life, Our hearts, too, are moved by feelings that can be bitter or sweet And that make our minds writhe around, invisibly, restlessly, Till we sit down and allow them their pus or juice to secrete. Then if we have diarrhea, our minds excrete just free verse But if we have constipation, our poems will be concrete. There will be more than enough time to sit in the john and think, To look for words, count syllables, and reflect on rhyme and beat. Our winds, too, when we have much time, we can pattern and repeat But they’re unchecked if there’s no time, dear friend, in our safe retreat. 4.29.2012 51

74 BEWARE OF THIS CROOKÈD LIZARD! Especially to a Former Student’s1 Colleagues and Students Once in a freezing December I saw by the only ember Left from an extinguished fire A wretchèd, helpless, dying tramp in wet rags and without a gamp In a state totally dire. 5

10

I pitied the unclean creature, faceless and without a feature, Out of mercy picked him up And took him with me to our house, unaware of many a louse That was carried with this pup. The corner where I’d made him sit got full of many2 a tiny grit — The lice of this foul youngster. You were so right, good friends of mine, when you said “He’s merely a swine; Beware this Crookèd monster!” 2011

75 ON A TREACHEROUS FORMER STUDENT A Phenomenal Teacher, Artist, and Dervish, The Epitome of Viciousness, Hypocrisy, Opportunism... The wickèd souls’ crookèd natures by no means can we straighten, Even with the divinest art or craft or science we may know. They are of a quite different clay that is molded by Satan.

5

I don’t mean they should be erased. We must allow them to grow, As God Himself has let them do, to harm us and to mislead More by themselves and their like seeds that on God’s old earth they sow. They exist to lead us to God eventually! Indeed, They’re instruments by means of which we may learn to shun evil, To avoid making others bleed, to abhor their fraud and greed.

10

*** Let me relate to you a tale of one such harmful weevil From Awfi’s useful collection of stories that makes us wise To their ways. It’s left from the times we may call medieval. 2. Unlike many in line 7 which is read as a two-syllabled word, here it has one syllable.

1. See “To An Imaginary Friend”, “Another Judas”, and the succeeding poem, too.

52

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You Fool 53

15

On a boundless ocean of sands of a desert which in size Equals a vast state like Texas, a generous wealthy man On a horseback, with foods and drinks needed for some three weeks, spies Something resembling a human. Instinctively, with no plan, He rides towards the point, sees a youth starved to death, and right away Gets off to make him sit and then do for him all that he can.

20

He pours some water down his throat first of all with no delay, Then feeds him and asks why he’s there. By gestures he starts to show To empty his bowels he leaves his fellows. When with a clay He cleans himself and comes to them, they have all melted like snow. He tries to reach his company, but gets lost in a short while Amid the desert and remains to become such a shadow.

25

30

Seeing they have no time to waste and he’s still so immobile, He places him on his horseback, walks by them till he may gain His strength when after some minutes he whips the horse with a smile. Shouting he requests him to stop to hear his words, though in vain: “Now that you’re leaving me to die, if you’re nobler than a beast, Keep quiet and don’t tell people, when you’re among them again, “How you’ve taken away my horse. Act like a man once at least. Since you’ll take away manliness, generosity, and aid, Beneficence, and grace as well from the whole world, west to east.”

35

*** Such a nature full of glass shards, though far sharper than a blade, Can teach us more to be wary of scorpions than what we write. The embodiment of blackness, unlike our ink, will not fade. 5.9.2015

76 YOU FOOL That make ladders of others To raise yourself to the heights And then fell them! A deadly fall awaits you. 3.6.2015

77 AFFECTION

5

10

Don’t touch it! It’s poisonous. The hunger a wise foe gifts Is far vital Than this bait placed over here Spiced with gaudy metaphors By a Judas. Kick it off! It’ll trouble you. “Affection leads to friendship, Friendship leads to contention, And contention to despite. Seeing this of affection, Take the life trip all alone As a rhinoceros does.”1 2009

78 WHY AMONG COMMON FOLKS AGAIN? Why among common folks again, poor soul? Vulgar is their knowledge of wrong and right. The likes of you they can never console!

5

To their blind hearts all is as dark as coal, But they consider their jet black true light. Why among common folks again, poor soul? It’s out of fools’ love when you they extol. Their gift or good will is only a blight. The likes of you they can never console!

10

15

Sinking in carnal pleasures is the goal They pursue in the face of the world’s plight. Why among common folks again, poor soul? They’re but a host of moles in a big hole Passing together idly their long night. The likes of you they can never console! 1. Budha

54

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Memory of Ebráhim Edálat-Pishé 55

Leave them alone in their feces to roll, To live in peace as they claim while they fight. Why among common folks again, poor soul? The likes of you they can never console! 12.21.2011

79 IN MEMORY OF EBRÁHIM EDÁLAT-PISHÉ! Impressed forever on my rueful heart By your virtues’ sublime and blessèd art, You will remain and live on in my mind Till doomsday even after I depart. 2.15.2021

80

LAST POISON CUPLET1

The world was absurd, life a sigh, Men were hollow, love was a lie. 10.25.2013

81 REPENTANCE Regretting my love gambles I don’t intend to approach More soul-consuming brambles.

5

I’ve had too much of disgrace To seek, like a nightingale, The thorny roses’ embrace. I am as all can see now A black, heartless, lonely crow On a winter barren bough. Winter 1986 1. With a pun on couplet

82 FRIENDSHIP To me it’s not a luxury; it’s the last rope of kinship That when our mates and relatives have broken their bonds we grip — Not the soup or the fruits we have before or after a meal, But our food when we’re starved to death, bereft of love on life trip. 9.18.2013

83 PERSEVERANCE Once in my youth when I studied At the university, I was homeless and thus wandered In the streets from dusk to dawn. 5

10

15

20

In winters when there was no one On the streets due to the cold, I saw a middle-aged woman At the ending hours of night. She stood beneath an old lamp post, All in red dress, and knitting Always some red stuff, and sometimes She looked round as for someone. One night I approached her and asked Where I could find thereabout Somewhere so that I might buy food If she lived there and she knew. Some months later when she had got Used to feeling my presence There in that Christian neighborhood, I dared approach and ask her Who her dear, nice ladyship was And why she appeared just then At that certain time of the night, All in red dress and alone.

25

She said she lived in that district And did her housework at home 56

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quest 57

But she came out about that time To meet an old friend of hers. 30

35

40

She said they had met each other Over thirty years before, Had walked and talked for a short while In a late spring afternoon. Then at last she had appointed That time on the following night To meet him at that very point All in red dress and knitting. I still saw her there for more years And always praised her patience And how she waited steadfastly In the cold and rain and snow. Some years later, when she was old And ill, a neighbor of hers Told me that she kept on waiting But never did her friend come. 2010

84 QUEST I quested for you in the pubs, In dormitory, on the campus, And in terminals of cities, But I could see no sign of you. 5

10

In the streets of my homelessness And among the nice teen-agers, While wandering in the deserts And in the bosoms of mountains, I searched for you But I could see no sign of you. When th’ adjoining jail was battered In a tumult of shots and cries And the window-panes all shattered And I waited for destruction,

58 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------15

20

25

At that final moment of life I thought of you.1 I always yearned for seeing you. I wished I had never asked you To abandon and forget me So that others might not suspect My love for you And despise you. *** I wished we had never met, We had never become friends And then never got estranged; Never had you departed. May God damn you! Winter 1986

85 ANGELS I sheltered myself indoors for some years From lying, dishonest, untruthful men And almost fallen by my kinsfolk’s spears I rose to search for a kindred soul then. 5

10

An angel showed up in my night’s sheer dark, Hugged me and promised to stay by my side With love and care and be a Noah’s ark To deliver me from the world’s high tide. No sooner had she come as a figment Of my imagination than she chose, Alas, to leave me in mental torment By bringing my illusion to a close. Angels have to cheer up more lonely men. They will vanish before you count to ten. 2009

1. In an air raid in Tabriz during the imposed war

86

TO CHARMIN1

5

You’re alive though you may be sick and frustrated, but not mad. Let me live with you in ruins. I don’t want you to be sad. If you’re on deathbed, may my tongue be cut never to say so, I’ll stay there to befriend your soul, kiss you from your crown to toe. I love you like years ago.

10

I know I should have come to you decades ago. Pardon me! I wept for you in the passageways of the winds. Every tree Can bear witness how I asked all after you but no one knew Whereto you went after that year; no one of them had a clue. I still love, and die for, you.

15

Some say you’re dead, some say dying, some say you’re out of your mind, But my heart tells me you’re all right and at last my love I’ll find. Do not go into that good night!2 Struggle with death till I come. My life, linger! We’ve not tasted joys of our world. Don’t succumb. And let’s have of love our crumb. 10.5.2013

87 AN ACTUAL FAIRY TALE I think when I first heard her song I was about six years old. Overwhelmed by the divine voice which trilled around our earth’s cold, I heard “Sweetie’s spinning her wheel while the world’s awaiting her.” I loved her though then I knew not who she and that Sweetie were. 5

10

At the age of ten, in grade four, I sometimes saw my teacher Work on musical notation, then to me a new feature, To compose songs for her to sing and for me, too, to murmur Throughout all the remaining years I would spend as a termer: “I am a lovelorn butterfly in garden and flowerbed, With pinions burnt, a heart restless, pining for love, almost dead. O, my fatal love, do you think I have got a happy time? I have gone mad and lost my mind and wander in grime and slime.” 1. This and the following are humble tributes to Charmin, a princess of modern Kurdish singing. I grew up, from the time I had not yet gone to school, with her songs played on records or on

our local radio. She, too, has divorced the world and chosen seclusion for about 35 years. 2. From Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

59

60 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

15

20

She was so young, and unmarried, about twenty five years old, When people rose up to upturn the soil so as to sow gold. Fair fairies’ singing in public regarded then as not good, She was sent to her fairyland to wander in her childhood. At the peak of reputation and in the prime of her life The bond of the celebrity with us was cut with a knife. In all later years I recalled her heart rending songs and wept. I could not find them anywhere after she slept or was swept. She had never been amoral in her short artistic life, Nor, after men discarded her, did she display spite and strife. A darling of cultured parents, gentle and of noble birth, She stayed in, always kept silent, to by and by lose her mirth.

25

30

35

40

Some six years ago when I met an angelic friend of mine, I asked her if she knew Charmin, that very fairy divine. Her brother was a musician and they’d grown up in her land But she said she had not even heard of her though she was grand! Three months ago I decided to go on the internet To find out something about her but left the net quite upset. The web pages I visited all said she had died last year, But one, quoting her father, said “she’s alive; there is no fear.” I went on and on with my search and found a film about her In which she herself appeared too, moved and talked, though I infer It was recorded years before. Ah! I hope she is still fine. She walked up and down her neat room! May her sun forever shine! There in a corner I could see a golden-horned gramophone Playing her great records of yore, but there was no telephone. I saw no television set but an old fashioned radio Quite like the days when she had not tasted the last fatal blow. Ah! she just smoked incessantly murmuring with the records What she’d sung in tender ages now with rusted vocal chords. I just wept and wept and shed tears. I saw my fourth grade teacher There, too, again, in a photo that said more than a preacher.

45

She’d lost in these thirty three years both her mother and her teeth; Yet her soft heart’s fire was ablaze despite all cold sighs beneath. That was the first time I saw her, I’d never seen her before, But I think I well knew the pains that this calm volcano bore.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 61

She was lovely, simple, charming, patient, and sublimely great. She was waiting, as I could see, for her love and her soul mate. I hoped, and hope, she’s still living so that I may get to her, Bathe her in tear, wreathe her with kiss, treat her wound with balmy myrrh. If I ever be so blessèd as to visit this fairy, I will divorce my only wealth, my books and my library; I’ll just seek to make her happy; I will not be contrary; Our griefs and sorrows we’ll bury; both of us will be merry. 6.17.2011

88 ON SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET 116 Your memorable words “love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds” Is a law meted and doled from above Not hard to perceive for true hearts and minds. 5

10

It’s well defined by your disciple Donne1 Who says love is not for one’s eyes or arm That dies once the time of those parts is done Or ends with the loss of those nice parts charm. A true lover never feels the absence Of a loved one although they’re poles apart In time or space, but their presence Is felt with all the sinews of the heart. Only the true minds death cannot sever; True lovers love each other forever. 3.18.2011

89 I LOVE YOU An old Huck Finn, I now intend to throw away these heavy shoes And wander weeping after you, bare footed, in the avenues. After throwing away my clothes and logic, heedless of men’s blame, I want to tear asunder now my chest and set my heart aflame. 1. John Donne (1572-1631)

62 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5

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You are not and will not be mine, but let me see you from afar From time to time, and let me feel in this dark sky I have a star. I don’t impose myself on you. You don’t have to love me at all. Dear cedar, let your shadow fall on this wreckèd and lonesome wall. Don’t turn away from this bald head and these rusted, once pearl-like teeth. Although reeking and disgusting, still I have that old heart beneath. I have and love you in this world. Don’t leave this vagabond forlorn. I well know I’m untouchable, but I deserve you, not your thorn. Take good care of yourself, hence me. Have your wheat, your chaff leave to me. Live long in happiness and glee, and let me, too, rejoice and be. You’re my soul, with you I exist. You’re my sun or moon. You know this. I will breathe as long as you shine and pour on me heat, light and bliss. 1.21.2014

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LOVE CAN’T BE BOUGHT1

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A mother related to me There was a boy whom her daughter, Emily, once loved painfully In two succeeding semesters. Months later the girl had confessed How she had taken some pennies From her purse to buy him candy. “Licorice was his favorite And I bought him some every day, But he still liked Jennifer more And better than me. Why, Mommy?” 8.10.2010

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ALCESTIS2

I don’t regard you just as a nice queen. You are the goddess of rare faith and love That among women I have never seen Nor will I witness in the world above. 1. The title is the answer to the question which Emily asks in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen and which the narrator considers «unanswerable!».

2. A paragon of wifely love and loyalty in Ancient Greek mythology; the wife of Admetus who dies for her husband and is restored to him by Hercules.

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While your husband’s parents, who loved their child, And his vowed subjects all refused to die For him and the thought of it drove them wild, You chose to give up your life with no cry. Men of the world yearn for a wife like you Though none of them is indeed so selfish As to bid his cherished sweetheart adieu For his own sake and then live in anguish. Could I ever find at last one like you In love, loyalty, truthfulness, virtue? 2010

92 EASTERN FIDELITY

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This morning I took a taxi From the cemetery to my home. On the way a lady got on And some miles farther she got off Without having paid the cab fare. The driver called her back shouting “Dear Madam, you forgot to pay Your fare; Madam come; pay your fare!” She stopped and turned her head and laughed At the driver and he laughed too. She went away and he told me She was her dearly beloved wife! 2010

93 TO LADY HEIRÁN Though not a Hindu to be burnt alive with your deceased mate Who demised fifteen years ago and you chose to stay and wait, You passed away right then with him. A dame of untainted skirt, You lived on to pine silently, his great loss to tolerate. 5

Where most marital bonds are false, married couples treacherous, You proved loyal to your husband still up to the heaven’s gate

64 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When you knew he would not return. You wore away by and by Under the burden of your heart, its gnawing, back-bending weight.

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I have no doubt you’d die for him like Alcestis or would leave Willingly together with him. Your love’s depth was beyond rate. I know sisters’ love for brothers and their never-ending rues After their death, but among wives a few with you I equate. You stayed after him to show us true love can’t be bent by fate. You went away early and young though you thought it was so late. 2.27.2014

94 A SPARK OF LOVE A burnt out bosom which sheltered a dying, forsaken heart Would not have room for more than you or abide another dart, But none suspected the treasure buried there for a whole age Would be unearthed only by one who had the skills and its chart. 5

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Some passed by in scorn and contempt and some rushed with spades and pikes To heap fortunes on full many a pompous or lowly cart, Ignorant of the golden fact that the wealth would be revealed With a light pole of compassion molded out just with God’s art. Love is a quest for the riches, a self-love, which is not based On pity, that sublime token of sacrifice. You were smart And deserving of loyalty who sought not even my love But observed a youth in the one who was about to depart. Were I ever granted on earth this humble life to restart, As in the past, from painted tarts and the proud I’d keep apart. 4.9.2014

95 INACTIVITY The life begun and carried on in time, Like a long piece of music or a rime, Stands as a painting that’s a spatial art In its entirety before my heart.

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Every detail of it can now be seen With no order — before, after, between. Thus the chronological time I trace In the frozen anachronistic space. To say what I have seen in my lifetime Is as hard as a high mountain to climb. I sit and stare at it from foot to peak And feel I am too weak to start to speak.1 7.19.2012

96 TO MY FOUL SELF Full stop. You are less than nothing. Get off your donkey of pride! You are only a tiny fly, in eagles’ realm don’t reside! Hear what I say! I’m not your foe. I’m your second self, dear fool. How long do you want to go on saying things unjustified? 5

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Why don’t you give up this habit of taking all your clothes off At seeing spoonfuls of water when you are not qualified Even for the job of swimming? I’m truly ashamed of you. When do you learn, you foul creature, it’s me that people will chide? A little knowledge is dangerous. Yet you show you’re a know-all. You’re a fool and hence free, of course; for you people tan my hide. It’s only for your lunacy that I’ve suffered all my life, For your silliness I have sighed, for your foolishness I’ve cried. To such a stinky rat as you why am I doomed to be tied? Have you left anywhere for me, O fool, on this earth to hide? 4.25.2012

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RED HANRAHAN2

At the end of your futile trip You’ll find a card On the front of which you will read: 1. Arts are sometimes classified as temporal and spatial. In the former (like music or literature) an art work needs time to convey itself from the beginning to the end but an art work of the latter type (like painting) is

instantly before the audience’s eyes entirely. 2. To understand this, see William Butler Yeats’s short story “Red Hanrahan” and the concept of Paradox in Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Mathematical Sets, especially the Card Paradox.

66 A Heartless Crow upon a Winter Barren Bough ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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«What’s written on the other side Is true, quite true», But on the back of which you’ll see: «What’s written on the other side Is false, all false!» 6.19.2010

98 TAKING OFF MY GARB TO REST «Where on this dark night shall I hang My tattered coat?»1

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«The foxes have holes and the birds Of the air nests: But the son of man hath nowhere To lay his head.»2 11.16.2013

99 MY EPITAPH Men* shall shortly find out for sure Dogs are more human and mature. 1.30.2021 * An innocent, saint, or prophet Is not a man on the market.

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A-Z3

Or /Z/-/S/ Busy, noisy bazaars; Sunset; silence! 6.11.2013 1. From “Woe Is Me” by Nima Yushij, the founder of modern Persian poetry 2. Matthew, 8:20 3. This shortest two-act play is built upon the phonological contrast between the voiced

and unvoiced sibilants /z/ and /s/ to convey noise and silence respectively (4 ones for each); see the opening and conclusion to Foroogh Farrokhzád’s “Another Birth” in its original Persian.

NOTES 1 TRUTH — In Persian mysticism, particularly in The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq-ot-Tayr) by Attár (the greatest Iranian mystic, 1145?-1221?, and Rumi’s master), translated into English by Edward FitzGerald as Birds Parliament in 1889, birds gather and decide to start questing for their Lord. With innumerable hardships, only 30 survive and succeed to reach the peak of Qáf (/qahf/), the mystical abode of their Lord. ‘See’, in Persian, is 30 and ‘morgh’ equals bird. Their Lord, Seemorgh (30 birds), is their own reflection! — In algebra, the mortalities for a time span, for instance, can be shown by means of a graph or curve. Graphs are drawn in terms of equations formed by a function and a/some variable(s). Some graphs rise to a maximum point and then descend, some descend toward a minimum point to start ascending afterwards, some only descend or rise. I’ve drawn the curve of men’s life as rising to its maximum point in their youth, the peak of the Qáf, and then descending. I’ve also had in mind Sophocles’s riddle of the Sphinx in Oedipus the King where man has been described as a beast with 4 legs at first in infancy, unable to rise from the ground, then standing upright on 2 legs, in the middle of life, and finally, when inclined towards the earth again, standing with the help of a stick (upon 3 legs).

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Thank God!