Angeline
Poet Chick
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2002
- Posts
- 27,174
Great idea for a thread. I'm glad I caught it now as I didn't notice it when it was first posted.
I've told this story before, so sorry if you (dear reader) have heard it already. When I was around 18 I found this poem in a book of poems by Mideastern women poets. The author is Forugh Farrokhzad, an Iranian writer who died in the 1960s in a car accident. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever read, and I made a copy of it and carried it in my wallet for years. And until the internet became the new thing, I never read another word of hers, but in recent years I've found her online and I love her as much as ever.
All her English poetry is in translation from Farsi, so some translations are better than others. This one is just ok, but the best I can find online now.
Window
Forugh Farrokhzad
One window is sufficient
One window for beholding
One window for hearing
One window
resembling a well's ring
reaching the earth at the finiteness of its heart
and opening toward the expanse of this repetitive blue kindness
one window filing the small hands of loneliness
with nocturnal benevolence
of the fragrance of wondrous stars
and thereof,
one can summon the sun
to the alienation of geraniums.
One window will suffice me.
I come from the homeland of dolls
from beneath the shades of paper-trees
in the garden of a picture book
from the dry seasons of impotent experiences in friendship and love
in the soil-covered alleys of innocence
from the years of growing pale alphabet letters
behind the desks of the tuberculous school
from the minute that children could write "stone"
on the blackboard
and the frenzied starlings would fly away
from the ancient tree.
I come from the midst of carnivorous plant roots
and my brain is still overflowed
by a butterfly's terrifying shriek
crucified with pins
onto a notebook.
When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice
and in the whole city
they were chopping up my heart's lanterns
when they would blindfold me
with the dark handkerchief of Law
and from my anxious temples of desire
fountains of blood would squirt out
when my life had become nothing
nothing
but the tic-tac of a clock,
I discovered
I must
must
must love,
insanely.
One window will suffice me
one window to the moment of awareness
observance
and silence.
now,
the walnut sapling
has grown so tall that it can interpret the wall
by its youthful leaves.
Ask the mirror
the redeemer's name.
Isn't the shivering earth beneath your feet lonelier than you?
The prophets brought the mission of destruction to our century
aren't these consecutive explosions
and poisonous clouds
the reverberation of the sacred verses?
You,
comrad,
brother,
confidant,
when your reach the moon
write the history of flower massacres.
Dreams always plunge down from their naive height
and die.
I smell the four-petal clover
which has grown on the tomb of archaic meanings.
Wasn't the woman
buried in the shroud of anticipation and innocence,
my youth?
Will I step up the stairs of curiosity
to greet the good God who strolls on the rooftop?
I feel that "time" has passed
I feel that "moment" is my share of history's pages
I feel that "desk" is a feigned distance
between my tresses
and the hands of this sad stranger.
Talk to me
What else would one offering the kindness of a live flesh want from
you
but the understanding of the sensation of existence.
Talk to me
I am in the window's refuge
I have a relationship with the Sun.
~~~~~~~
There are two other poems that kind of shook my world when I read them and made me want to write poetry. Both were also encountered when I was an undergrad in college.
Sailing to Byzantium
WB Yeats
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
~~~~~~~
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
Ted Berrigan
In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
_____will be too; but
I'll be shattered by then
But now I'm not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
_____buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941--
I'll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.
~~~~~~~~
Thanks for all the great poems in this thread and for allowing me to share ones I love.
I've told this story before, so sorry if you (dear reader) have heard it already. When I was around 18 I found this poem in a book of poems by Mideastern women poets. The author is Forugh Farrokhzad, an Iranian writer who died in the 1960s in a car accident. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever read, and I made a copy of it and carried it in my wallet for years. And until the internet became the new thing, I never read another word of hers, but in recent years I've found her online and I love her as much as ever.
All her English poetry is in translation from Farsi, so some translations are better than others. This one is just ok, but the best I can find online now.
Window
Forugh Farrokhzad
One window is sufficient
One window for beholding
One window for hearing
One window
resembling a well's ring
reaching the earth at the finiteness of its heart
and opening toward the expanse of this repetitive blue kindness
one window filing the small hands of loneliness
with nocturnal benevolence
of the fragrance of wondrous stars
and thereof,
one can summon the sun
to the alienation of geraniums.
One window will suffice me.
I come from the homeland of dolls
from beneath the shades of paper-trees
in the garden of a picture book
from the dry seasons of impotent experiences in friendship and love
in the soil-covered alleys of innocence
from the years of growing pale alphabet letters
behind the desks of the tuberculous school
from the minute that children could write "stone"
on the blackboard
and the frenzied starlings would fly away
from the ancient tree.
I come from the midst of carnivorous plant roots
and my brain is still overflowed
by a butterfly's terrifying shriek
crucified with pins
onto a notebook.
When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice
and in the whole city
they were chopping up my heart's lanterns
when they would blindfold me
with the dark handkerchief of Law
and from my anxious temples of desire
fountains of blood would squirt out
when my life had become nothing
nothing
but the tic-tac of a clock,
I discovered
I must
must
must love,
insanely.
One window will suffice me
one window to the moment of awareness
observance
and silence.
now,
the walnut sapling
has grown so tall that it can interpret the wall
by its youthful leaves.
Ask the mirror
the redeemer's name.
Isn't the shivering earth beneath your feet lonelier than you?
The prophets brought the mission of destruction to our century
aren't these consecutive explosions
and poisonous clouds
the reverberation of the sacred verses?
You,
comrad,
brother,
confidant,
when your reach the moon
write the history of flower massacres.
Dreams always plunge down from their naive height
and die.
I smell the four-petal clover
which has grown on the tomb of archaic meanings.
Wasn't the woman
buried in the shroud of anticipation and innocence,
my youth?
Will I step up the stairs of curiosity
to greet the good God who strolls on the rooftop?
I feel that "time" has passed
I feel that "moment" is my share of history's pages
I feel that "desk" is a feigned distance
between my tresses
and the hands of this sad stranger.
Talk to me
What else would one offering the kindness of a live flesh want from
you
but the understanding of the sensation of existence.
Talk to me
I am in the window's refuge
I have a relationship with the Sun.
~~~~~~~
There are two other poems that kind of shook my world when I read them and made me want to write poetry. Both were also encountered when I was an undergrad in college.
Sailing to Byzantium
WB Yeats
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
~~~~~~~
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
Ted Berrigan
In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
_____will be too; but
I'll be shattered by then
But now I'm not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
_____buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941--
I'll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.
~~~~~~~~
Thanks for all the great poems in this thread and for allowing me to share ones I love.
