Love Song - Forough Farrokhzad

The night is painted by your dream
Your perfume fills my lungs to extreme

You are a feast for my eyes!
All shapes of woe you belie

As the body of earth is washed by rain
From my soul you cleanse all stain!

In my burning body you are a turning gyre
In the shade of my eyelashes you are a blazing fire.

You are more verdant than a wheat field!
More fruit than golden boughs you yield!

To the suns you open the gate
To counteract dark doubt’s spate

With you there is nothing to fear
But the pain of joyful tear

This sad heart of mine and profuse light?
This din of life in the abyss of blight?

The glance in your eyes is my field
And with it my eyes are sealed

Before this I had no other image
Or I would not but you envisage

The pain of love is a dark pain
Going and demeaning oneself in vain

Learning against people with black sight
Defiling oneself with the filth of spite

Finding in caresses venom of wile
Finding villainy in friend’s smile

Handing gold coins to the marauding band
Getting lost in the midst of the bazaar land

With my soul united you will be
From grave you will raise me

Like a star on wings decked with gold
You come from a land untold.

You alleviate sorrow’s pang
Flooding my body with embrace’s tang

You are a stream flowing onto my dry breast
My bed of my veins with your water is blest

Within a world which on darkness does feed
With every step you take I proceed

Underneath my skin you go!
There like blood you flow

Burning my tresses with a fondling hand
Flushing my checks with an urging demand

You are a stranger to my gown
An acquaintance with my body’s lawn

You are a shining sun that never dies
A sun that rises in Southern skies

You are fresher than first light
Fresher than spring, a luster sight

This is no longer love: this is pride
A chandelier that in silence and darkness died

When love did my heart entice
I was filled with a sense of sacrifice

This is no longer me, this is no longer me
My life with my ego amounted to a null degree

My lips your kisses prize
Your lips are the temple of my eyes

In me your stir a great rhapsody
Your curves are an attire on my body

O how I crave to sprout
And my joy with sorrow shout

O how I wish to rise
And my eyes with tears baptize

This forlorn heart of mine and incense perfume?
The music of harp and lyre in a prayer room?

This void and these flights?
These songs and these silent nights?

Your glance is a wondrous lullaby
Cradling restless babes thereby

Your breath is a transcendental breeze
Washing off me tremors of unease

Finding in my morrows a place to sleep
Permeating my world deep and deep

In me the passion for poetry you inspire
Over my lays you cast instant fire

You kindled my passionate desire
Thus setting my poems afire.

Click here for a website devoted to Forough Farrokhzad who died 41 years ago yesterday