Only The Sound Will Last Poem by Forough Farrokhzad

Only The Sound Will Last

Rating: 3.0


Why shall I mind, why?
Birds fled to the aquatic side,
The sphere is vertical,
The sphere is vertical-
And move: rise and fall.

At the borders of sight, bright stars rotate.
The earth stands steady, seen from the heights.
All the black holes are altered to confined circuits and links.

And day is an unknown vastness-
to the contracted wits of paper-worms.

Why shall I mind, why?
The route had to cut across my veins,
But, don’t you see?
The cultivation stand of moon doesn’t agree-
with the disposition of defective cells.

In the ambiance of sunrise, only the sound,
only the sound will adhere-
to the active quantum of time.

Why shall I mind, why?

Why this inert bog is there, why?
Isn’t it just to amass the mass of vicious bugs?

Don’t you see?
Those decomposed corpses had shaped
all thoughts of this freezing morgue.
In the dark, infirm creatures veil-
and insects talk.

Why shall I mind, why?

Don’t you see?
These printed sheets will not prolong,
the short life of a shameful thought.

I am progeny of the tree,
I cannot breathe-
in this contaminated air;
And a dying bird-
has just reminded me of the flight.

Don’t you see?
The feat is to reach to the bright gates of Sun.
And it is to surge into the consciousness of lights,
And it is to watch these aged windmills dying out-
in the releasing vacuity of space.

Why should I mind, why?
I milk unripe clusters of wheat with the warmth of my breasts.

Sound, sound, only sound,
Sound of the clear calls of ice to flow;
Sound of the stroke of shines-
on the feminine limb of earth;
Sound of fertilized sense;
Sound of the expanding love;
Sound, sound, sound,
Only the sound will last!

In the land of dwarfs, scales are small,
Why shall I mind, why?

Don’t you see?
I act upon roots of Truth
And the constitution of my soul
overruled the bounded jurisdiction of the blind.

Don’t tell me about the lengthy, wild, howls-
and about the pitiful genitals of animals!

Don’t tell me about the sorry twist of worms-
in the emptiness of limbs!

Legacy of martyred flowers committed me to life,
Legacy of martyred flowers,
Don’t you see?


Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani, March 2006, Montreal.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Kim Barney 09 July 2015

Sorry. Nothing but gibberish to me. Maybe I'm not yet awake, but I've been up over four hours now.

1 0 Reply
Stephen W 09 July 2015

Very odd indeed....................

1 0 Reply
Edward Kofi Louis 09 July 2015

Rise and fall with the muse of life. Nice work.

0 0 Reply
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