The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles

Twittering

145 Twittering Pegah Ahmadi We lower our heads to our chests sunshine falls off the swing, we raise the swing to our chests it falls off the frame. I have never been so much a child! With my voice unaccompanied by the sound of Kamancheh! I have never climbed to the moon through the alley, have never reached the bottom of my childhood with a sigh! And that’s the tepid reason on this unique night why the wheat sheaf of my hair is tied to your dreams! Come up one more rooftop higher than this mouth that breathes through your boots higher than this air that ties its vein to the moon! Stretch your feet through the sky behind me I feel sleepy, Cotton! I feel sleepy! and my sleep keeps delaying my birth, come on! Last night, from among all the afflicted nights up on the moon no city had been left along the way except for my soaked land. Tonight, I am the whole of this shoreless sky and night pulsates in my temples its stairs lost. And all that’s left of the heart is a man who “passes by the wet trees.”* *The phrase is from a long lyrical poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, titled “Let’s Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season” (see Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, University of Arkansas Press). 146 I have never been so much in love Never been so beautiful Never been so much a poet. And my heart is this very poem that comes “along the wet trees.” and I have no doubt that my most chest-cherished memory will be this very thing, this twittering! Translated by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak ...