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Sholeh Wolpé
Sin
I
have sinned a rapturous sin
in
a warm enflamed embrace,
sinned in a pair of vindictive arms,
arms violent and ablaze.
In
that quiet vacant dark
I
looked into his mystic eyes,
found such longing that my heart
fluttered impatient in my breast.
In
that quiet vacant dark
I
sat beside him punch-drunk,
his lips released desire on mine,
grief unclenched my crazy heart.
I
poured in his ears lyrics of love:
O
my life, my lover it’s you I want.
Life-giving arms, it’s you I crave.
Crazed lover, for you I thirst.
Lust enflamed his eyes,
red wine trembled in the cup,
my
body, naked and drunk,
quivered softly on his breast.
I
have sinned a rapturous sin
beside a body quivering and spent.
I
do not know what I did O God,
in
that quiet vacant dark.
From: Sin- Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad by
Sholeh Wolpé (University of Arkansas Press, 2007)
Reborn
All my being is a dark verse
that repeats you to the dawn
of
unfading flowering and growth.
I
conjured you in my poem with a sigh
and grafted you to water, fire, and trees.
Perhaps life is a long avenue
a
woman with a basket crosses every day;
perhaps life is a rope
with which a man hangs himself from a tree,
or
is a child returning home from school.
Maybe life is the act of lighting a cigarette
in
the listless pause between lovemaking,
or
the vacant glance of a passerby who tips
his hat and says, Good morning!
with
a meaningless smile.
Perhaps life is a choked moment where my gaze
annihilates itself inside in the pupils of your
eyes—
I will mingle that sensation
with my grasp
of the moon and
comprehension of darkness.
In
a room the size of loneliness,
my
heart’s the size of love.
It
contemplates its simple pretexts for happiness:
the beauty of the flowers’ wilting in a vase,
the sapling you planted in our garden,
and the canaries’ song— the size of a window.
Alas, this is my lot.
This is my lot.
My
lot is a sky that can be shut out
by
the mere hanging of a curtain.
My
lot is descending a lonely staircase
to
something rotting and falling apart in its exile.
My
lot is a gloomy stroll in a grove of memories,
and dying from longing for a voice
that says: I love your hands.
I
plant my hands in the garden soil—
I
will sprout,
I know, I know, I know.
And in the hollow of my ink-stained palms
swallows will make their nest.
I
will adorn my ears with twin-cherry sprigs,
wear dahlia petals on my nails.
There is an alley where boys who once loved me still
stand
with the same tousled hair, thin necks, and scrawny
legs,
contemplating the innocent smiles of a young girl
swept away one night by the wind.
There is an alley my heart has stolen
from my childhood turf.
A
body travelling along the line of time
impregnates time’s barren cord,
and returns from the mirror’s feast
intimate with its own image.
This is how one dies, and another remains.
No
seeker will ever find pearls from a stream
that pours
into a ditch.
I
know a sad little fairy who lives in the sea
and plays the wooden flute of her heart tenderly,
tenderly…
A
sad small fairy who dies at night with a kiss
and is reborn with a kiss at dawn.
From: Sin- Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad by
Sholeh Wolpé (University of Arkansas Press, 2007)
The Deep Dive
Stevie’s raisin-coloured braids,
a
shade lighter than his skin,
bob
up–down as the waves punch the boat.
He
signals Go down.
I
don’t.
I
stay close to the boat,
hold tight the taut rope.
Can’t
breathe.
Not
the air in the tank.
Not
the air in the air.
My
lungs inflate, deflate,
but
that’s beside the point.
I can’t
freakin’ breathe,
and
I yell this to the waves,
to
the boat,
to
Stevie
who
magically surfaces beside me,
an
aurous brown god in goggles,
regulator hose dangling by his mouth.
He
holds my head between his palms, says,
“But you ARE
breathing. You ARE.”
I
look at him and even in this panic, this feeling
of
imminent death, I note how beautiful he is,
how
I could perhaps outlive this storm
in
this man’s brawny arms, let myself go
and
the hell with the world,
with who I am, or am supposed to be,
with my anxious lover waiting at the shore.
“Relax, baby,” says Stevie, “I’ll stay with you.”
He
pulls me into his arms and I breathe deep
from the tank strapped to my back. Stealthily
he
releases air from my jacket, adds
a
cube of weight to my belt ,
and
down we go, down
into the broth of another world.
The
sea bottom is a sandy desert flush against massive
rocks,
and
there are cacti, tiny Joshua trees, and brown grass
dancing
to
the water current’s silent tango…
Time means nothing here.
Palestine, Israel, and Tehran mean nothing here,
my
daughter contemplating suicide at twelve means
nothing here,
sons in military fatigue breathing Iraqi air means
nothing here,
even women giving life and grenades taking them
away,
mean nothing here.
Here, the fish are birds,
electric blue fins, wings,
and
beneath this airless sky, Stevie and I.
From: Rooftops of Tehran by Sholeh Wolpé
(Red Hen Press, 2008)
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