The scent of chicken tahchin
Is wafting up to me
Through the window
And I know soon
She will knock at my door…
The postures I held for long breaths by the flow of the Ganges I did not hold to achieve light I held no star in sight as I turned my … Continue reading →
I want to know what happened
On January 7, 1982
Half past one in the afternoon
In Evin Prison
But larks have not forgotten to fly
And grass still sprouts from the earth of Kabul
And rivers are replenished by the snows of Pamirs
And the groves of Samangan are filled with sounds of birds.
At seven o’clock in the morning
As I pass by a green house
An automatic sprinkler
Suddenly goes off
And wets me head to toe.
In the Quran, God taught Adam the names of all things. Even the angels didn’t know the names. Do we carry the weight of these words with us? Do they hold us responsible?
During the hostage crisis, when I was Albanian,
my history teacher conceded, “You’ve to be born into English
to be its rightful citizen.” I wanted to be an American poet,
but was a Persian settler.
And then someone from another rooftop shouted a verse of Rumi’s poetry into the clear night air.
I do not wait for poetry
But go in search of it
Because my wings are broken
And I am left far from my nest…
I was fifteen years old
When I found the moon in the Biabanak sand dunes.
Death, like a weary actress
Has gone behind the stage
To take off her black dress
And put on her lounging gown.
I like the sweet accent
Heard on the stairs this morning:
Persian with a hint of American.
One of the lessons from our recent visit to Iran as a Peace Delegation is that Iran is a mature country. It is 2,500 years old, ten times as old as … Continue reading →
. Even though it has to wage much of its struggle underground, the Tudeh Party of Iran, 40 years after the overthrow of the autocratic U.S.-installed Shah, continues the fight … Continue reading →