Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Majid Naficy: A Song for Peace
Oh, war!
How long do you knock
At the gates of my city?
Let me become a shouting voice
To silence the echo
Of your heavy fists,
A voice louder
Than the roar of the fighting planes
Over a city at war,
A voice deeper
Than the moaning of death
In the shameless mouth of earth.
I am not a man of epics
Who blows your lying leaders’ horn.
For years my Rostam* has died
In his well of loneliness.
I am a man of lyrics,
A bard for peace.
Let me take again the harp
That you have stolen from these people
And sing about their painful wounds.
Let me compose a song for peace
Beyond your phony epics.
~~
*A hero in Iranian mythology comparable to Hercules, thrown by his half-brother Shaghad into a well, where he dies.
~~~~~
Copyright 2018 Majid Naficy
Majid Naficy is an Iranian-American poet. He was the youngest member of the literary circle Jong-e Isfahan and was considered the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry in the late 1960s in Iran. He was a member of the Confederation of Iranian Students in Los Angeles in 1971, and a member of the independent Marxist Peykar Organization after the Iranian Revolution from August 1979 until spring 1982.
At a time when most Iranian leftist organizations supported Khomeini’s takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran and waging war with Iraq, the Peykar Organization stood out by opposing these policies. Majid Naficy was the writer of two crucial articles in Weekly Peykar against taking hostage the personnel of the American Embassy in Tehran; The Zigzags of the Counter-Revolution (that is, the Khomeini regime) and Their One-Sided Reflections Within the Ranks of the Revolution (Weekly Peykar, Appendix to No. 34, December 16, 1979) and Iran-Iraq War Is Not in the Interests of the Masses of Two Countries against Iran-Iraq war (Weekly Peykar, Appendix to No. 73, September 23, 1980).
In April 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife Ezzat Tabaian in Evin Prison, he fled Iran to Turkey on horseback. Naficy finally moved to Los Angeles, California in May 1984. There he revisited his politics, returned to writing to poetry, co-founded a group of Los Angeles-based exile Iranian poets and writers called Saturday Notebooks (or “Saturday Sessions”) and co-edited the literary journal of Iranian Writers’ Association in Exile and the poetry section of Arash magazine published by Parviz Ghelichkhani in Paris. He continues to write and publish poetry and nonfiction both in Persian and English and participates in human rights activities mostly related to Iran and America. (adapted from Wiki)
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Few anti-war poems are as eloquent as this one. More powerful to me than most war-worship epics. As a man of lyrics, Naficy has here composed a poem we should all listen to, composed by this bard of peace. Thank you to a man who confronts the gods of war with his hope.
LikeLike
Thanks for saying this, Jim. I’m afraid the rhetoric of war is loud now.
>
LikeLike
Finally posted. Hope others don’t show up. For some reason I kept getting “failed to post”
LikeLiked by 1 person
You made it through, Barb. I can read Vox postings on my phone, kindle fire, and PC, but can only successfully post on the PC. Maybe you have the same situation?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I always do VP on the phone but it has been behaving oddly the last few days.
LikeLike
Thanks for hanging in there, Barb!
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was in Iran just before the revolution. Beautiful people put me up in their homes and took me to the hospital when I had food poisoning from the chicken on the El Al airlines flight that I learned I shared with Prime minister Begin on the first lap of the journey and
oh the roses in Shiraz! Humans create magnificent art/architecture and then must kick down the sandcastles on the beach constructed by anyone else.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, I have had many Iranian friends through the years, cultured, educated people. Hating an entire race for the inhumane things their leaders do is truly a sign of an ignorant mind.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Such eloquence and beauty in this voice, devoted to utter horror. This isn’t the place—this world—all of us have come to, we should have arrived. Who knew we were raising tyrants in a certain far away grove in the center of the human heart? How did some of us not grow up?
I mourn like the dove in the early dark on the longest day, wondering if it will ever cease to be so.
LikeLiked by 3 people