Le Vent nous emportera

Dans ma nuit, si brève, hélas
Le vent a rendez-vous avec les feuilles.
Ma nuit si brève est remplie de l'angoisse dévastatrice
Ecoute! Entends-tu le souffle des ténèbres?
De ce bonheur, je me sens étranger.
Au désespoir je suis accoutumée.
Ecoute! Entends-tu le souffle des ténèbres?
Là, dans la nuit, quelque chose se passe
La lune est rouge et angoissée.
Et accrochés à ce toit
Qui risque de s'effondrer à tout moment,
Les nuages, comme une foule de pleureuses,
Attendent l'accouchement de la pluie,
Un instant, et puis rien.
Derrière cette fenêtre,
C'est la nuit qui tremble
Et c'est la terre qui s'arrête de tourner.
Derrière cette fenêtre, un inconnu s'inquiète
pour moi et toi.
Toi, toute verdoyante,
Pose tes mains - ces souvenirs ardents -
Sur mes mains amoureuses
Et confie tes lèvres, repues de la chaleur de la vie,
Aux caresses de mes lèvres amoureuses
Le vent nous emportera!
Le vent nous emportera!


Forough Farrokhzad,


(Poème extrait du film Le Vent nous emportera, ( d'Abbas Kiarostami)

***


The Wind Will Take Us

In my small night, ah
the wind has a date with the leaves of the trees
in my small night there is agony of destruction
listen
do you hear the darkness blowing?
I look upon this bliss as a stranger
I am addicted to my despair.


listen do you hear the darkness blowing?
something is passing in the night
the moon is restless and red
and over this rooftop
where crumbling is a constant fear
clouds, like a procession of mourners
seem to be waiting for the moment of rain.
a moment
and then nothing
night shudders beyond this window
and the earth winds to a halt
beyond this window
something unknown is watching you and me.


O green from head to foot
place your hands like a burning memory
in my loving hands
give your lips to the caresses
of my loving lips
like the warm perception of being
the wind will take us
the wind will take us.


Forough Farrokhzad
(Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak)

***


The Captive (Asir)

"I respect poetry in the very same way that religious people respect religion". Forugh Farrokhzad, Four Interviews, p78


Farrokhzad's first collection, of forty-four poems including all those cited and quoted called (the) captive, was published in the early summer of 1955. The speaker throughout these poems is a serious, searching, loving, young woman. The poems contain no philosophizing themes, or full-blown descriptions of nature. Images drawn from nature appear in these poems as part of a world in which love and the giving it implies are all that matter or seem, to exist. The speaker reveals a spectrum of moods: anticipation, regret, joy, remorse, loneliness, abandon, repentance, doubt, and reverie. But the immediate issue is love, a woman's love for a man that makes the heart ache and that can satisfy all needs. Men appear in various stances, from proud, possessive, uncomprehending, faithless conquerors of the body to selfless lovers of whom the speaker feels unworthy. Men in the Captive poems are there with strong chests, embracing arms, heads to be held in one's lap, Lips to kiss. Lovemaking is often an end in itself, but has meaning as such. Some men do not comprehend this. Others, who see the speaker as a promiscuous object, are ignorant of love's magic and meaning and unprepared to commit themselves to love's giving. Although not joyous for the most part, The Captive poems radiate the vitality, sensuality, and hopefulness of a young woman emphatically portraying the significance of love. The poems as a whole lack an explicit Islamic environment or palpable Iranian settings, even though the reader can assume that the speakers' reiterated sense of captivity reflects a climate of traditional mores both Islamic and Iranian. Furthermore, the domestic setting seem both Iranian and reflective of conflicting emotions and doubts Forugh experienced as young wife, mother, and poet.


The immediacy and intensity of reader reaction to the personal, autobiographical voice in The Captive derived in large measure, of course, from their unprecedented feminine character. But even had Farrokhzad speakers, content, and perspectives been "masculine", the poems in The Captive and her subsequent collections would have provoked strong reader response because of a second, almost equally provocative feature: their "modernist" as opposed to "traditionalist" character.

***


The Captive (Asir)

I want you, yet I know that never
can I embrace you to my heart's content.
you are that clear and bright sky.
I, in this corner of the cage, am a captive bird.


from behind the cold and dark bars
directing toward you my rueful look of astonishment,
I am thinking that a hand might come
and I might suddenly spread my wings in your direction.


I am thinking that in a moment of neglect
I might fly from this silent prison,
laugh in the eyes of the man who is my jailer
and beside you begin life anew.


I am thinking these things, yet I know
that I can not, dare not leave this prison.
even if the jailer would wish it,
no breath or breeze remains for my flight.


from behind the bars, every bright morning
the look of a child smile in my face;
when I begin a song of joy,
his lips come toward me with a kiss.


O sky, if I want one day
to fly from this silent prison,
what shall I say to the weeping child's eyes:
forget about me, for I am captive bird?


I am that candle which illumines a ruins
with the burning of her heart.
If I want to choose silent darkness,
I will bring a nest to ruin.


O Stars (Ay Setareh'ha)


Yes, this is I who in the heart
of night's silence
rip up love letters..
he is gone, yet affection for him
will not leave my heart.
o stars, what happened
that he did not want me?


A Recollection of the Past (Yadi az Gozashteh)


A city on the shore of that roaring river
with chaotic palms and nights full of light
....which for years
has opened its arms to him and me.


Face to Face with God (Dar Barabar-e Khoda)


From my bright eyes snatch
the eagerness to run to another;
. . .and teach my eyes
to shy away from the shining eyes of others. . .
O lord, O lord. . .
show your face and pluck from my heart
the zest for sin and selfishness.
do not tolerate an insignificant slave's
rebelliousness and refuge-seeking in others. . .
hear my needful clamor,
O able, unique God.