Poetry on the Streets of Tehran

Iranian poet Simin Behbahani, the "lioness of Iran"

Iranian poet Simin Behbahani, the "lioness of Iran"

As protest roils Tehran’s streets, even in the face of a brutal crackdown, poetry is making itself heard. This past Saturday National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition interviewed poet Simin Behbahani, known as the “lioness of Iran,” who read a poem she had composed about the tyrannny of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The NPR website also included a second poem about 27-year-old philosophy student Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose shooting by a member of the Iranian Basij volunteer militia was recorded and then posted on youtube so that all the world could see.

The two poems raise the question of the role of poetry in moments such of this. What difference can it make?

In the first poem, Behbahani responds to Ahmadinejad’s “babbling” and his “insolent ranting.” He has become swollen with pride, his faith has become blind (suggesting he has lost sight of Allah), and he is “throwing my country to the wind.” Here’s the poem:


Stop Throwing My Country to the Wind

If the flames of anger rise any higher in this land
Your name on your tombstone will be covered with dirt.

You have become a babbling loudmouth,
Your insolent ranting something to joke about.

The lies you have found, you have woven together.
The rope you have crafted, you will find around your neck.

Pride has swollen your head, your faith has grown blind.
The elephant that falls will not rise.

Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind.
The grim-faced rising cloud will grovel at the swamp’s feet.

Stop this screaming, mayhem, and bloodshed.
Stop doing what makes God’s creatures mourn with tears.

My curses will not be upon you, as in their fulfillment.
My enemies’ afflictions also cause me pain.

You may wish to have me burned, or decide to stone me.
But in your hand, match or stone will lose their power to harm me.

June 2009
Translated by Kaveh Safa and Farzaneh Milani

The second poem speaks to the eternal existence of the young woman who was shot:

For Neda Agha-Soltan

You are neither dead, nor will you die.
You will always remain alive.
You have an eternal existence.
You are the voice of the people of Iran.

June 2009

Can poetry do anything about the beatings, imprisonment, and killings. In the back of my mind, I hear a contemptuous snort from poet Howard Nemerov, who I once heard speak dismissively of those poets who wrote anti-war poems and participated in public readings during the Vietnam War. I’m not sure whether Nemerov thought the poetry bad or the poets delusional about their sense that they could make a difference, but he was unimpressed.

I think also of satirist Tom Lehrer’s song making fun of folk song idealists (in “The Folk Song Army”): The good guys may have had poets and poetry on their side (including Garcia Lorca, Earnest Hemingway, and George Orwell), but the more telling fact is that the fascists won:

Remember the war against Franco?
That’s the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs.

To be sure, Lerhrer is satirizing those activists who romanticize poetic opposition from afar (and who downplay the actual outcome of the war) rather than those poets who were actually on the front lines. But the question still remains what poetry offers other than a consolation prize. Is it simply a means of rationalizing powerlessness?

Behbahani’s poems claim that the protesters are in touch with something deeper than material reality. In the first poem, regardless of whether they are burned or stoned, those resisting oppression will prevail. Although the tyrant may outlive them, ultimately his tombstone will be covered with dirt. I’m not sure what to make of the line, “The grim-faced rising cloud will grovel at the swamp’s feet,” but presumably it is continuing the idea of the rope of lies that strangle the tyrant and the fallen elephant that finds itself unable to rise. Does the cloud lack a substance that the swamp has? Does the swamp represent the people—something that appears low but will in the end be triumphant?

And in the second poem, Neda is not dead but always alive. She is the people of Iran and, whatever happens in the short run, her memory will not fade. As Shelley wrote about Keats, “T’is death is dead, not he.”

So what impact might such a poem have on actual events? Perhaps it gives the protesters a story that they can hang on to when they are being attacked. It might confirm them in their willingness to sacrifice themselves, even appealing to their willingness to become martyrs. Poetry, because it is language at its most evocative, taps into a sense of higher cause, and that can have real life consequences.

If you believe that ideals will ultimately win out over oppression, then Behbahani is writing for the winning side. But the winning will have to happen in the long run. Even though she is speaking to specific political realities (Ahmadinejad ‘s bluster, Iran’s isolation from the rest of the world), she has set her sights on the intangible. At least in this regard, practicality and poetry do not mix.

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