Oh, by your hair, I swear, you’re my despair
By Tahereh
Oh, by your hair, I swear, you’re my despair
I moan aloud you’re absent and elsewhere
Your ruby lips are my sweet honeycomb
And head to foot I’m gripped within love’s snare
I’ve gone and you are here in place of me
Although I’ve borne such grief for you, although
I’ve drunk repeated glasses of love’s woe,
Although my soul is burned, worn out with pain
And dead with grief, my heart’s alive, I know
Because your lips like Christ’s awaken me
I am a treasure, one that’s yours alone,
I’m silver, and the mine’s a mine you own
I am a seed, you are the harvest’s lord---
If you are me, what is my flesh and bone?
If you are me, what’s this misshapen me?
Your love’s reduced me to a speck, and I
Am drunk with love for you; suppose that my
Poor hand should touch your hair with reverence---
Since you are me it’s me I’d glorify
My prayer mat has become my limbs for me
If my heart’s yours, why hurt is as you do?
And if it’s not, why’s it so wild for you?
Moment by moment make this heartache greater
And drive this me from me now through and through
Reside in this distracted heart that’s me
The smoky fire of love’s intensity
Has burned all that there’s ever been for me,
It’s cleansed belief from me and unbelief---
Your eyebrow’s curve has all my piety
And church and ka’bah are now one to me
The day the world was made, creation’s pen
Wrote on its tablets all the fates of men---
Before they came out from their nothingness
And life was breathed into their bodies…then
Your seal was on the wild heart that’s in me
Fate saw to it, when man was made from clay,
Your love was planted in my heart that day---
My love for you became my destiny
And heaven and hell for me have fled away.
Apart from you there’s no desire in me
We’re what’s left of ourselves, we die, the wine
We drink down to its last dregs is divine;
We’re burned within bewilderment’s deep valley,
We’re lost souls wandering without a sign
How deeply will my shame dishonor me?
From when I cried out, “Show my truth to me!”
I’ve boldly walked his street for all to see—
I wandered everywhere and cried aloud
That he is all of me and I am he.
I am the heart, and he has taken me
My ka’bah is the dust upon your street,
Your face the light that makes the world complete—
My soul lives from the curling of your locks
My heart prays now to where your eyebrows meet.
Your curls are like the Christians’ cross for me
I’m wild with longing for my champion,
or my incomparable, my dearest one
A traveler in the valley of despair,
I long for only you, all else is gone.
Love fills my limbs now and is all of me
How long must I assent to what I hate
And hide the turmoil of my inward state?
And never mention that you’re far from me,
And hypocritically preach and prate?
How long must longing be the sum of me?
My cloak and prayer mat? They’re no longer mine—
I’ll fill bright crystal glasses with red wine,
All Sinai’s valley will be filled with light
And ardent love will make the whole house shine
The wine-shop’s door will be the place for me
My love of knowledge hurts and humbles me
I cry for justice now incessantly
My love has filled my glass with truth’s pure wine…
From self and from the world I am set free
The search for truth is what possesses me
The servant poured wine on the world’s first day
And filled each glass that leads our minds astray
And essences were accidents, reduced
To drunken nothingness and swept away
The wine itself is drunk that is in me
At every moment love resumes its call
It summons all the world and all in all—
Whoever wants to walk this way with me,
If waves of ruin make his fear to fall
He shouldn’t venture near this sea that’s me
Up on the roof now, there and everywhere,
I am your maid, a bird trapped in your snare,
And I’m the owl that calls to you at night—
My life depends upon your being there
The pain being me has gone from me
By Tahereh, translated by Dick Davis in Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women (Penguin Books, 2021), reprinted by permission of Dick Davis