The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 2/17/2009)

[RetroLounge]

Bathing

I took my clothes off in the delicious air
So that I could bathe my body in the running stream
But the stillness of the night seduced me
Into confessing my heartache to its waters

The water was cool and moved in dazzling waves
In whispered moans, it circled around me, crawling with desire
With soft glass hands
It was pulling my body and soul into itself

Suddenly from around it a wind rose
Showering my hair with a sheet of mud
And with its breath
Pouring the pungent sweet smell of wild pennyroyal
Into my mouth

Fulfilled and rocking with joy
I closed my eyes and pressed my body into its soft young wild grasses
Like a woman beside her lover
I surrendered myself to the stream

Restless, thirsty, fevered, and overflowing with kisses
The water's trembling lips rushed upon my legs
And all at once we were inside of each other . . .
Satisfied and intoxicated
My body and the soul of the stream had become sinners

Forough Farokhzad

Translated from the Farsi by Meetra A. Sofia

***************



The controversial and revered poet Forough Farokhzad (1935-1967) is Iran's greatest contemporary poet, one of the most influential writers of the Middle East, and one of the world's best loved women poets of the twentieth century. During her short lifetime Forough became a legend. Having sold over a million copies of her work, Forough holds a significant place in world history because she was the first woman in twenty-five hundred years to have a major body of work published in Iran and to emerge above all of Persia's contemporary poets as the greatest poet--a woman who in the land of heroes became a heroine.

Forough was not only a polemical figure during her lifetime, but since her death her poetry has come to be a powerful anthem for freedom. During the Iranian Revolution, for example, students would publicly recite her poem "My Heart Aches for the Garden" in protest to the tyrannical Khomeini regime. In fact, her work was considered such a threat to the dictatorial policies that when her publisher refused to stop printing her poems, he was put into jail and his factory was burned down to the ground.

With rare emotional depth, Forough's work is sincere, sensual, earthy, evocative, and an intriguing combination of love story, stormy passions, loss, betrayal, freedom, and most importantly, renewal. A poet of the 1960s, her poetry reverberates with issues of love and freedom and speaks to us as much today as when she first wrote them.

***************

:hi:

RL

[blueraven95]

1. ...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

2. ...

Amazing poem, amazing bio. Thanks for this!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

7. Yeah, I found this one and fell in love with it...

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. ~

:donut: :hi:

[RetroLounge]

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Wow, my dear Retro!

What an amazingly erotic poem! I'm really loving the imagery here...

Very inspiring!

Thank you...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

8. ...

:hi:

RL

[Justpat]

5. It makes me want to take up skinny dipping. n/t

[RetroLounge]

10. Hee.

Good plan...

:hi:

RL