“O you whose eyes are my meadows
your eyes have branded mine
Had you been in my heart before now
I would never have mistaken others for you”
“My town was the grave of my desires”
i finished this poetry collection last night and still lack the coherent thoughts to write a review. this is now without a doubt my favourite collection that i’ve ever read. every single poem had me feeling gutted and empty but also feeling so full of life. there’s a certain sense of incomprehensible grief that follows me whenever i’m reading persian literature because i feel the loss of everything our nation once was and could have been and all that is has been reduced to. reading these poems, i felt the grief of an entire nation, the pain of the iranian women who have had to fight for a voice but i also felt such pure happiness and love. love for a partner, love for a family, love for an entire culture. forough farrokhzad uses language in such an awe-inspiring way and i wish i had a physical copy of this book, i wish i could print every single line into my brain, i wish i could hear the words spoken to me in farsi, my mother tongue.
“That night your kiss scattered the drop of eternity into the mouth of my love”
“Look at the grief inside my eyes and how it melts drop by drop”
“Alas, in my little night
the wind has a tryst with the leaves of the trees
In my little night, there is dread of devastation”