PRISON POEMS

...The 40-year-old Iranian writer and scholar Reza Baraheni, who was for 13 years a professor of English literature at the University of Tehran, is the author of 26 volumes of poetry, fiction, criticism, and translations (in Persian...

...that's not important Ardalan is like a copulating dog his teeth marks are still in my shoulders there were of course lashes slaps kicks and smuts too you're a poet and they say poets know many things tell me what I should do next what they will do next pardon me for this headache I've given you well what can we do after all it's a laborer's life someone should tell us what to do q 430...

...The translation is the author's own...

...The poems below, which appeared first in the English journal Index on Censorship, arefrom the new Indiana University Press book God's Shadow: Prison Poems, by Reza Baraheni, copyright © 1976 by Indiana University Press...

...Doctor Azudi, the professional Azudi is just like Genghis Khan when he walks he walks on a pile of fresh corpses the Khan did not clean his teeth either the Khan also belched the Khan did not take off his boots either Azudi has shattered the mouths of twenty poets today Azudi wears a tie something Genghis Khan never did only this splendid detail reveals the prodigious march of history F.M.'s autobiography Sir it's not easy for me to talk to you here in prison there's a rumor that you're a poet I never wrote a word of poetry in my life I never even read a word of poetry 429 but I can tell you about the life of a laborer in which there's no poetry if the pain in your feet permits if you can forget the questions you will have to answer in an hour if you don't fear that your brother has been taken away or that your mother has had a stroke if you can believe that your daughter has not been seized listen to the words of this humble prisoner: I am nineteen years old when I was three my mother beat me at six it was my father who whipped me I started work when I was five when I was eight the landlord's sixteen-year-old son tried to rape me he did not succeed because after all everything has its limit the mulberry cannot carry the fruit of the melon and the ant is not made to carry a tree the prick of a thick-necked rich youth who eats butter honey meat chicken and turkey cannot dig into the arse of a working boy who shits none of these things but when I was twelve the landlord succeeded in taking the revenge of the rich bastard my father hanged himself he'd wanted to kill himself for years now he used my disgrace for his excuse at fourteen I threw up the bricks of the master's house alone at fifteen I was pushed from a rug factory to a sock factory to a textile factory at sixteen the leaden air of the printing house set in my chest I'm a typesetter now for three years I type-set Long Live the Shah six days ago I decided to type-set Long Live Liberty they got me five days ago they've been pulling my nails ever since I've forty nails twenty of them belong to my hands and feet and twenty more belong to my hands and feet in my mind Ardalan raped me three days ago they haven't raped you, have they...

...He now lives with his wife and two children in the U.S., teaches creative writing and lectures at college campuses on poetry, and on politics and oppression in Iran...

...EDS...

...They are reprinted here by permission of the publisher...

...Pressure from abroad effected Baraheni's release and emigration...

...According to Amnesty International, the Shah's Secret Police constantly holds between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners...

...These bold publications led to his arrest and 102 days' cruel imprisonment...

...In his Masculine History (1972)—a book soon banned but an immediate underground success—in a newspaper article, "The Culture of the Oppressor and the Culture of the Oppressed" (1973), and in other writings, Baraheni spoke out against the Shah's despotic monarchy and racial oppression, and pleaded for the cultural freedom and autonomy of Iran's ethnic minorities...