Inaugurating The Garden - Forugh Farrokhzad

The crow that soared
above our heads and plunged
into a vagrant cloud’s restless thoughts,
its voice a short spear travelling horizon’s length,
will carry the news of us to town.

Everyone knows.
Everyone knows you and I
have seen the garden through that cold,
grim window and have plucked the apple
from that far, flirtatious branch.

Everyone fears.
Everyone fears, but you and I
merged into one
before the water, the mirror, and the lamp,
and were not afraid.

I do not speak of the frail union of two names,
their embrace on an old ledger’s page –
I speak of my hair,
happy with your singed poppy kisses,
our bodies’ defiant intimacy,
and our nudity’s sheen like fish scales in water.
I speak of the silver life of a song
a small fountain sings each dawn.

We asked the wild rabbits
in the flowing green woods,
and we asked the pearl-pregnant oysters
in the foaming cold-blooded sea,
and we asked the young eagles
in that lofty mountain of victory,
What should be done?

Everyone knows.
Everyone knows we have found our way
to the cold and silent dreams of the phoenix;
have found the truth in the garden,
in the shamefaced gaze of an unnamed flower;
found eternity inside a boundless moment
where two suns eye each other.

I do not speak of anxious murmurs in the dark –
I speak of daylight, of open windows, fresh air,
and a stove in which burn useless things;
of an earth pregnant with new seedlings,
of birth, maturation, and pride.
I speak of our loving hands that built a bridge
of perfume, light, and breeze between nights.

Come to the fields…
to the vast, vast fields;
call me from behind the breath of cotton flowers –
like a stag calling his mate.

Curtains billow with choked sorrow,
and from the heights of their white tower
innocent doves gaze at the earth below.

---

Forugh Farrokhzad (1935 - 1967) Iran
Translated by Sholeh Wolpé
Source: AnOther