I'm
Depressed
I am depressed,
O so depressed.
I go to the porch and extend my fingers
Over the taut skin of night.
The lamps that link are dark, O so dark.
No one will introduce me to the sunlight
Or escort me
To the sparrows' gathering.
Commit flight to memory,
For the bird is mortal.
Farrokhzad here
recognizes the mortality of the poet (=bird) and the potentially permanent
vitality of poetic statement (=flight of the bird). The speaker's
depression stems from her realization of the endless night. There
will always be dawns, but the individual poet knows that hers are
limited in number. We readers must keep alive the dawns when Forugh
Farrokhzad soared, through the experience of her poems and her poetic
life, which as this brief, sad poem shows, exhibited a final, total
merging of the poet and the female person, in the image of the solitary
bird.
A Lonely Woman Michael C. Hillmann page 163
Reprinted from Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry, by
Michael C. Hillmann. Copyright © 1987 by Michael C. Hillmann.
Reprinted with permission of
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
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