☀ Today's Poem: "Window" Forough Farrokhzad

پنجره Panjareh

A window for seeing
A window for hearing
A window like a well
that ends deep in the heart of the earth
and opens out into this expanse of recurring blue kindness
A window that overfills the tiny hands of loneliness
with its nightly gift, the perfume of generous stars
and from there
one could invite the sun to the geraniums in exile
One window is enough for me

I come from the land of dolls
from under the shade of paper trees
in the garden of a picture book
from the dry seasons of barren friendship and love
in the dusty alleyways of innocence
from the years the letters of the colorless alphabet grew
behind the school's tubercular desks
from the moment the children could write
the word "stone" on the blackboard
and the panicked starlings flushed from the ancient tree

I come from among the roots of carnivorous plants
and my brain is still overflowing
with the terrified voice of the butterfly
they crucified in a notebook
with a pin

When my trust hung suspended by the thin rope of justice
and all over town
they were chopping up the heart of my lamps
when they bound the childish eyes of my love
with the black blindfold of the law
and from the agitated temples of my desire
spurts of blood were scattering everywhere
when my life was nothing more
nothing more than the tick-tock of the wall clock
I realized I must, I must, I must
love madly

One window is enough for me
A window on to the moment of awareness and seeing and silence
Now the walnut sapling
has grown tall enough to tell its young leaves
the meaning of the wall
Ask the mirror
the name of your savior
Isn't the earth, trembling under your feet
lonelier than you are?
The prophets brought their prophecy of desolation
with them into our century
The ongoing detonations
and the poisoned clouds
are these the reverberations of holy verses?
O friend, O brother, O my kin
when you arrive at the moon
write the history of the mass murder of the flowers

Dreams are always
thrown down from the heights of their own naïveté
I smell a four-leaf clover
that has grown on the gravestone of worn-out meanings
Was the woman buried in her shroud of waiting and chastity my own youth?
Will I again climb the stairs of my own curiosity
to greet the good God strolling on the roof?

I sense time has passed
I sense that "the moment" is my share of the leaves of history
I sense that the table is an illusory gap between my hair and the hands of this sad stranger

Say something to me
What does one who grants you the kindness of a living body
want from you in return but an understanding of what it means to feel alive?

Say something to me
In the sanctuary of my window
I am one with the sun