Farsi is the second tongue that in part guides the poems’ visions and makes them want to blush. It’s such a rich and astonishing language, and I have such poor command of it. Yet this linguistic deficiency also draws some of the more pure, literal meanings and images from the syntax and the sayings. The sounds are not impressed upon with meaning initially, for me. So I return in Farsi like a child in the language, with the visceral gaze, and no shame for that. I offer ‘translations’, reluctantly.
A poem begins with a colour, an image, the beat of a line that might bruise itself into my mind, sometimes for long periods. That becomes ritual, the rhythm is repeated or the thing chants itself visually across the eye, sometimes a note or set of dashes or scribbles, revisited. Eventually, those foci begin to soften; the colours may seep out into a wider palette, the image catches its story, language falls into the line. This happens at the point of writing, and meaning arrives sonically, intuitively. These are the better poems.
Often, I’ll try to capture the essence of that arrival by remaining true to the image clarified, in a microcosmic way. I want to write about many things, but in the poems that I begin with clear intention for meaning, some message, or sharpened point, these do not work well.
I think of what Mina Loy says about ‘Poetry [as] prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea’, and that resonates with me.
For the thing to stand for itself then is enough, and I have learnt, or am still learning, that it does not need to carry the weight of everything, to hold its voice in the world. Transformative as the process can be, these poems try to hold fast to looking at, and for, the universe within the bluebottle, or in an apartment in Tehran.
The cast of characters being called up are not asked then, to speak for more than the moment and form they inhabit. Or, at least, I have tried to avoid imposing on them that responsibility. I read them as caught between glass well slides; a tiny drop, magnified, and slipped between pages, big and full enough, in and of themselves. To speak of the pomegranate’s fall from Saveh, the milk jar, or Abdul’s pouring of rice, is just that.
In many of these poems, the visceral gaze comes from the child’s mind, returned to through the figure of Gabriel and his noticings. Poets are awful thieves, and I am indebted, indeed guilty, of crimes against his fresh eyes and sparkling imagination. But there is licence, and also bribery, in the poems’ gifts of a blackbird, or party horns.
I like it when sound and colour pull through forms, how they swell a sonnet or pull it close. This is perhaps the firmest restraint I apply to poems. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and free verse overcomes the form, but for others, the form submits and that can be a useful source of discipline, generate meaning of its own. I also enjoy the game.
*
I was once a chicken heart;
small, singing down the river
I was once a standing bear; twilight
claws; rainbow salmon scales
I was once an aging man;
sat, watching them deliver
our whole universe;
dark, backed into the soil
And one time when an old skin
had rotted blue on me, I was
a snake,
a night-time birch,
an elderly mother
of three sunk girls.
They were pink skin
and purple-seahorse curls
I was once the mastodon
in children’s crayon scrawls
Once the liver leaking bubble
on the knife and board,
or the feather fallen
onto Morecambe Bay
(a sonnet)
Inside my right thigh
there is a Neptune bruise
turning to
red moon and
Sparse constellations
in the pores,
drying blood
clotting stars
And a sweet hurt
every time
I send a finger
into space
This mango bruise each day gets more
and more sunny at the heart
It came
as someone else’s poppy bruise, but
now has blued into a sort of
Neptune on my inner thigh
battle wound
starship badge for
showing off
for falling off the bike, now
Fading slow
into dispersing constellations of
dry blood in pores:
clotting stars
Sometimes, I like to reach a finger out
and press into the sky
Seventeen sacks
of rice grain came
pouring on his toes he’d
stabbed each pack stacked
on the shelves that lined a wall along
the back part of his father’s shop: Patel’s
angryat the lies people can tell
all about him were
mad clouds of
Paki of Camel-Carter of Dirty
Arab of Terrorist
Cell of
Radicalization
all
floating round his face
and beard
but now:
the cool slide
of off-white rice
falling
down his
open ankles;
Rolling
down the skin on
phalanges in-between
his toes and
filling up towards these clouds,
felt
like dry ablution.
Struck here to this hard ground he
curled his toes through
these
bits of heaven rising,
cold silk up his shins,
he could stand here for a long time
and speak
think
only ever
pearl rice.
There is a small village near Shiraz, cracking
by the mountains’ foot, pinning down
earth. There is a girl, she has letters
which she speaks to Einstein through,
translated into stars. She has been banned
from standing in the mountain’s palm at night
by her mahram, who has no or little time. She
has married a man with a PhD
so she can fly far, to the US, to study
constellations. Anousheh invited her. Dige.
* dige / another
(the mullah)
There is a sofreh, in a small apartment in Tehran, there is chai sweetened
with nabat a taxi man talking to Azita, Koroush, Behnam:
‘I told him!, “get out / boro biroon
tuye aftab beshin un derakht moleh shoma niste in riye
-ye Iran.” by God it’s what I did!’ He swirls the nabat round. ‘Picked
him up off Khoddami St. standing in the shade of that chenar
and drove him up a few feet before I stopped the car, said
“get out!” he said “aghachikar-mikoni to?”
“I picked you upbecause you were stood under our tree
I want you to stand under the heat of the sun - now wait.”’ Dige.
* dige / another
on a jammed road in some far-off eastern land; a bulbul seller, in pink,
masked, beige cap. There is a man, approached by the seller crouched
at the silver Range Rover driver side, who reaches out. The seller reaches in to the hexagon cage, and bird
by
bird balances the exchange of feather and toman.
Each time he puts a nightingale into the buyer’s hand extending
from the rolled-down window, the palm opens, each truth-song
flight, while Emilee Flood and Lofi sing
‘if it’s quite alright’. They say
on Twitter that not all heroes wear capes. They also
say, this is custom: buy a bird, release, pray. And the poacher,
keeps on. Dige
* dige / another
When I come to you, tall glass/ ikea
plastic cup/ milk jar in hand and pour
for you; life. When I don’t come soon
enough, watch your flopping leaves
knowing your soil is dry, the conversation
in me can go on. But in time
I rise and take the ten steps
to the kitchen sink, pulling muscles;
calves, glutes, thighs, through such
sorrow, on the brink of water-eyes.
Knowing too wellthis desire for entering
the natural world. By sheer fluke
or accidental swirl into humanity
I find myself, bending, by this avocado
tree; grown from pip in Gü jar
on toothpicks and still water; Gabriel
and me. Look over
its green and reddened crown
of fronds beaming, so skinny
going down, into the terracotta
deepening, assure myself that I am all
-owed compassion
for why else
would I water
water the voiceless
and the fern, curling at the tips.
The bluebottle landing, looping
green metallic glass, matt wing,
how life comes out of it
as big as mine; an eclipse
of our bodies as we sit, watching
Elizabeth’s rose, bobbing its heavy
head as the breeze blows
yellow. We are basking in the sun,
small and mellow, thinking of sharia;
and the fiqh of forty lashes, for cruelty
to life
It’s so obvious to walk into sea
WATER to feel alive because the cold
FILLS around the bottom of your
BODY and it’s so obvious to walk
OUT when the cold has adjusted and you
can’t feel it anymore to feel ALIVE
and HEAVIER and DRIPPING and
it’s so obvious to hope the sun is out
so that you can walk and APPRECIATE
DRYING in the SUN or to hope for
HAIL and COLD that makes you
JUST COLDER while you tread and
tremble home. It’s so obvious for a woman
to do this
(Arrowfield)
Way of entries lamp light gloom
on the whistle that calls at night.
Package in the hedgerow; hawthorn blossom rushing on
ancestral spite; hooded angels transacting veinal-escalation
for metal cuts, paper slights They adorn their wings
with these. Uncollected bins that night creepers fill
with used nappies, fast penknives. The playground is colourful fists and
council brews help call out each child’s name gone
walkabout. Grey slabs sleetedwith balloon canisters, and Gabriel
asks about these; bullet shells / silver beans. So in our garden,
some way to the back, we have planted things and given to them names
of the highest order, of which Parivash is fairy queen; fourteen
foot shade, candle that sears a slot in our sky and gleans the unseen there,
also
angels need a way to fare better; flowers for the late spring; cream cups
ta’ârofing Behzād’s filigree in cinnabar, gold beanstalkcurving down to
reach
magnolia grandiflora – evergreen
And these,
high gloss leaves
that point to
* Parivash, meaning ‘fairy queen’ in Farsi
* ta’ârof, to engage in the Iranian art of etiquette and civility, a verbal duel, a waltz of words
* Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād, Persian painter and miniaturist (c. 1450 – 1535)
on the living room rug! at 8:55 just before
setting off for Forest Club. The thick whittling
stick in the yellow bag slung
nearby. Frog on the rug, at five to nine,
fawn-brown legs, camo-chest, wheatish arms,
green rimmed eyes, then the fuchsia tongue!
party horn curling slowly up
& down in a young boy’s
mouth, not just pretending
to be
amphibian!
we had said goodbye
for the first part of the night
and I stood by your bed, while
you asked me why should we love God
(– the mostest – you had later clarified you meant)
I had just come home from sliding on a path the curb that caught the front wheel of the Cannondale and concrete thathad scraped off half my palms left paper-skin on the ground near Princess Road on the way back from Didsbury Mosque. (they do circles on a Wednesday
to teach the basics of deen)
sitting with my palms upturned
and stinging round some red and yellow
islands bubbling raw
I have learnt that maybe
I am preaching
what I do not know
Gabriel,
I put your questions on a black bird
and sent them to the sky
(which you said you’d eat)
plapped here on the tabletop
for just under one week and rotting, blood and sour. Is this
the nastaran you threw me to the stars
in. is this the way to say goodbye
where we are from? i’ve been
watching your last seen date and time jigarr
jiggar on crushing petals in my lungs squeezing
the last drops of oil into these ducts that are liars.
So my pain is pink, and that record
fingered out on the chopping board; white,
around my liver which you said
that you would eat
*jigarreh-man, literally meaning ‘my liver’, though typically used as a term of love and endearment
*jigar / liver
*nastaran / wild rose
I came to this planet earth
with cherries hanging on my ears
and I was not a girl.
I am also that girl.
I followed the path of the horse’s gallop,
by a setar that played without strings
and I was not a musician. I am
also that hand that plays. The man
dropped a coin for my sound.
I am that man. The glint rolled as sound
loaded a horn so loud it banged
and worth was fashionedwell. I am
a bursted eardrum. The ear felt
wind sigh past. Wind cuts across
the ear. That ear is me.
The ear is a house that rests
on water with stilts that wobble.
Those stilts are me. And that house
belongs to me. Mine is my name
and my body. The body is
me where no maps are drawn.
The pencil belongs to me. I am
the belonger, and he is mine and me. Mine
is a home of cherry trees and they are
sharpened. I am the stone from one
eaten. That meal is me and I kneel
before the mouth that does.
Teeth are me. Gums.
The tongue is enough.
I am taste buds and they
flower an orchard every June.
I am June. My Mother is Joon.
Joon is a place over bitter seas.
I am that. I do not sail pastblue lines.
* joon, meaning ‘dear’ in Farsi
i was once a
pomegranate too but people
kept pulling at my chunks for quarters
that they’d made inside their two
eyes, looking at me
when I was first laid on the table
after cuttings from my tree, i was the rose
of all fruit bowls,
picked by zan Ali. After that his blade
was the one that slicedme in four parts
and enjoyed that break inside as he pulled
me open like a lily
cleft to bloom. The toothpick
for each of my little gems. The pink juice
dribbling on the plate and down his chin,
i didn’t mind that.
How many times if you knew
i have thought of that
wet travel through his beard
after Saveh, after
dropping off
that lower lip
now
I am pink stained skin
cream only
in the parts where he missed with slips of tongue
or spits from under fingertips
and ruptures in the pull-apart.
Limp. And see
how well my skin leathers
as i bloodmoon on the plate for him
waiting for him to come back to
my three left crescents
*
MARYAM HESSAVI is a British, Manchester-based poet and critic, with poems and reviews appearing in various magazines. An alumnus of the University of Manchester, she holds an MA in English Literature, with specialisms in Modernism, Creative Writing and Linguistics. Maryam is a Ledbury Critic, freelance writer and contributing editor at Ambit Magazine. She is also a committee member for the Manchester-based poetry reading series Poets and Players.