Persians

The tray-clatter rattle of the pistol shots
Raucous throb of engine, sob of gears

As martyr Motahari falls

And Khomeini weeps into his handkerchief


Oh, how imperturbably Hussein
Awaits his fate unbowed

Pure figure in white funeral shroud
Marks the martial music of hoof beats,

The stallion’s beauty, then serenely meets
Black Shemr’s calmly unresisted blow

Dark sword thrust against the light, its foe


Above the obedient bustle of the crowds
Corpses in rotting suits for shrouds

Bowed heads confessing they have sinned
Sway in meek allegiance to the wind

Eine wichtige Ansage
Für die Damen

An important announcement
For the ladies

It is in your own interest
Says the calm Lufthansa pilot

As we descend towards the terminal
In the small concealing hours

(And he speaks in the same
Courteous but neutral tone

—Courteous, neutral, and, above all
Normalising tone

Which numbs the shock of alien routine
—The same neutral tone, as I say

That he uses to inform us
Of local time, ground temperature

And weather conditions, conventional
Registers, international measures

Of physical, cultural and political facts
It is only prudent to remember)

It is in your own interest
(Notice how a simple emphasis on ‘own’

Anticipates futile protest)
That you follow the dress code

Of the Islamic Republic
And ensure

That your heads are covered

Do I hear a rustling

A sullen frisson
Of resentment among the women

—Is this girl weeping in fury, her father
Urgently consoling next to me—

As headscarves
Are pulled out of handbags

To cover and conceal
All that forbidden glory now

Of coiffured and tinted hair
Of bare throat, and nape and shoulder

And does that elegant pair
Of immaculately robed and turbaned

Ayatollahs, with their trim beards
Who had sat quietly there, in Economy Class

With their wives and daughters
In the nullifying black

Of drab hijab, the chador
Tented round their persons, smile

That under the jurisdiction of the state
And against the disturbances of disordered flesh

A pious man can regulate
So much beguiling female hair

With a modest square of cloth
Fixed in place by vigilante wrath


Your whisper in Isfahan
Is pillow soft and close

As a lover’s kiss that blows
On the ear; I wish as sweet

My whisper back, tender rose
We know the perfumed silence

In the Persian garden waits
For others, as we bend to hear

The heart’s whisper that brings us near
And the scented air our senses sates

Light pulses between extended finger tips
And the smiles of eyes and untouched lips


Only here could I be so calm
In such a garden, where the clamour

Of unquiet flesh and intellect
Is hushed before this glamour

Offered to the senses, air
Dense with scent of stock and roses

In Isfahan, a city like a shrine
Where incense rises, lingers, stills

Mind and body with a healing wine
That disintoxicates our ills

Where well being finds the rhythm of its walk
Strolling in this garden deep in talk

That each to other the soul discloses.


A sweating judge who does not sin
Tightens and secures the noose

Around the neck of a terrified, defiant girl
Whose sexual behaviour was too loose

For the morals of a country town
Whose men offered her a martyr’s crown

To open her legs and let them in


What they call now an iconic picture
Was flashed around the world

And noticed briefly at the breakfast table
A reckless unpremeditated gesture

By the furious youth in the headband
Raising aloft, not as a trophy

But an indictment—a standard, the colours
In the field, the vivid blood-stained shirt

Removed from the body of a fallen friend
Smashed and trampled at the protest rally

Uncontrolled gaolers now hasten his end
The pitilessly exacting fate

When you shame the religion of the State
In the stench of the prison cells, the injured

Animal cries, whimpering
Of the fouled and huddled body

The vigorous bright flash
Of righteous anger extinguished

The fiery flower that blooms
Only in such ransacked gardens plucked

Crushed and discarded, defeated
The brilliant moment rendered vain

No deliverance here, no vindication
Certainly no reward, only annulment,

And the formal contradiction
Of a martyrdom without witnesses

Maybe in that unprepared for crisis
He believed a good man can’t be harmed

And that in this surge of power his life was charmed
How can he not now in his ordeal of leisure

Think it all but futility and waste
Out of a rash act done in stupid haste

How could he hold to any other measure


I needed to see the scene
Of Khomeini weeping

To recall how light and dark
Are latticed like shadows mottled

On a sunlit summer wall, not spread
In blinding Manichaean wholes

All light and darkness at their poles
Of too bright day and too dark night

—As down the centre of this street
In noon density of light and shade

Their lines of demarcation meet


Oh these grave and mirthless mullahs
They have, after all, failed to see

Something slips their gaze:
The unforgiving searchlight of their minds

They do not see
Which sweeps the prison ground and blinds

The fugitive souls its cold beam betrays
So I weep for that ancestor of theirs

The old reflective mullah with his stick
A resolute, well-tempered man

Bowed and half-blind
Paces timelessly outside the city walls

And his calm and measured walk
God’s mercy and eternity recalls

Don’t they see how too immaculately
Their robes are laundered

There are no streaks of sweat and dirt
No weariness or work

To soil their garments with despair
Or hope, when so much certitude

Is theirs to command
And dispense, and expect

Like Princes of the Church
Who walk in assurance of respect

—in a walk, as in a face,
so much revealed

so much effort to conceal—

You walk—with the careful dignity
Of prelates it is imprudent to deride—

As though the strict tempo of your self-control
Could serve as metronome for a nation’s soul


Yes, priests, in black gowns, binding of desire

The shadowed lane winding through the trees
With shafts of sunlight through the stained glass leaves

Amidst the wreck of a demolish’d world

Where I wandered through the dereliction
Climbed the stairs to find an old master's room

Where he kept a meagre fire in the grate,
And we sat and read the German poets

Careless of time, the distant bell ignored:
Darkness used to hang in the corridor

I would feel my way down years of darkness
And fumble for the handle of his door

But now the room is doorless, and unsafe,
Light and rain through the ceiling, rotten floors,

Smashed windows, peeling walls, no books, no fire,
The spirit gone from its habitation



This was the world, its order acted out
By priests vigorous with authority

Once, and these old men, dressed in their vestments,
They have stood their ground, kept the faith, are strong

Still as the old faith of our fathers dies
With the dying close of old Faber's hymn