Green
Delusion
The following
poem, called "Green Delusion" is described by the feminist critic
Farzaneh Milani as "Forugh's eloquent statement of all the sacrifices
she has had to make for her art." In this poem, which Milani entitles
in translation "Green Terror", the ever honest poet reveals that her
decision to live as an individualistic female and artist is not without
its price. Doubts, questions, and twinges of regret remains to roads
not taken and more conventional, more acceptable roles rejected. The
speaker in "Green Delusion" recognizes that nature can no longer be
a comforting idyllic force in her life, that she is far beyond able
to seek refuge in comfortable maternal and other domestic female roles,
and that her steadfast search for life's meaning has deprived her
of the comfort of religious faith.
I cried all day
in the mirror.
Spring
Had entrusted my window to the trees' green delusion.
My body would not fit n the cocoon of my loneliness.
And the odor of my paper crown had polluted the air
Of that sunless realm.
I couldn't anymore,
I just couldn't:
Street sounds, the sound of birds,
The sound of felt balls being lost,
And the fleeting clamor of children,
And the dance of balloons
Bobbing upward at he end of their string stems
Like soap bubbles.
And the wind, wind which seemed
To be breathing in the depths
Of the deepest dark moments of lovemaking,
Were exerting pressure
On the ramparts of the silent fortress of my confidence
And through old cracks in the walls were calling my heart by name.
All day my gaze
was fixed
On my life's eyes,
At those two anxious fearful eyes which avoided my stare
And sought refuge in their lids' safe seclusion like liars.
Which peak, which
summit?
Do not all of these winding roads
Reach the point of converence and termination
In that cold sucking mouth?
O simple words
of deception and renunciation of bodies and desires,
What did you give me?
If I stuck a flower in my own hair,
Would it not be more alluring
Than this fraud, than this paper crown?
How the spirit
of the desert got me
And the moon's magic led me from the flock's faith!
How the incompleteness of my heart grew large
And no half completed this half!
How I stood and saw
The ground beneath my two feet vanish,
And no warmth of my mate's body
Fulfill the futile anticipation of my body!
Which peak, which
summit?
Give me refuge, O apprehensive lights,
O bright doubting houses
On whose sunny roofs sway
Clothes laundered in the embrace of scented smoke.
Give me refuge,
O simple whole women
Whose slender fingertips
Trace
The exhilarating movement of a foetus beneath the skin
And in whose opened blouses
The air always mingles with the smell of fresh milk.
Which peak, which
summit?
Give me refuge, O hearthsful of fire-O goodluck horeshoes.
And O song of copper pots in the blackened kitchen,
And O somber humming of the sewing machine,
And O day-and-night struggle between carpets and brooms.
Give me refuge, O insatiable loves,
Whose painful desire for immortality
Adorns your bed of conquests
With magical water and drops of fresh blood.
All day, all day,
Forsaken, forsaken like a corpse on water,
I floated towards the most terrifying rocks,
Toward the deepest sea caves.
And the most carnivorous of fish
And the thin vertebrae of my back
twinged with pain at sending death.
I couldn't any
longer, I just couldn't.
The sound of my feet arose from the denial of the road,
And my despair had become vaster than my spirit's capacity to endure.
And that spring season and that green-colored delusion
Passing by the window said to my heart:
"Look,
You never progressed,
Yours has been a descent."
Iranian Culture
"A Persianist View" Michael Hillmann Page 162
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Green
Delusion
