“In This Blind Alley” poem by AHMAD SHAMLU

February 3, 2018 Mike Zonta Leave a comment

They smell your mouth

Lest you’ve told someone ‘I love you.’

They smell your heart

These are strange times, my dear

Love,

they drag out under lampposts

to thrash.

Love must be hid in closets at home.

In the cold of this blind alley

They keep their fires ablaze

burning our anthems and poems.

Do not venture to think.

These are strange times, my dear

He who pounds on the door in the nighttime

Has come to kill the light.

Light must be hid in closets at home.

Lo! the butchers

stationed on roads

with chopping-board and cleaver soaked in blood

These are strange times, my dear

They slit smiles off of lips

And song from the throat.

Joy must be hid in closets at home.

Canaries are being roasted

on a spit of lilacs and jasmine

These are strange times, my dear

Satan, triumph-drunk

Feasts at a table spread with our mourning

God must be hid in closets at home.

This poem was written shortly after the 1979 Revolution.

Translated by Saya Ovaisy in Tehran, Summer 2009 (pbs.org)

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“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“. . . the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten that you are divine.”
— Peter Solomon in The Lost Symbol

“Have an open-mind, but don’t let your brains fall out.”
— Jacob Needleman

“When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing towards destruction.”
— Jacob Needleman in his new book What is God?

“A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.”
— G.K. Chesterton

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe

“Give thanks to unknown blessings already on their way.”
— Native American proverb at cafe in San Francisco

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
–e.e. cummings

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Bathtub Bulletin

“In This Blind Alley” poem by AHMAD SHAMLU

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Consciousness, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more