THE CROWNED CANNIBALS: THREE POEMS

...She sits there, a year before or after her death A year before or after her funeral Round like the word Orient Round like the 0 in the word or the world I want to get up and go see her again q 341...

...340 They chatter on things that don't matter Everyone fails nowadays Where are the old ways When rhymes flowed like melted honey When I gave my eunuchs and poets tons and tons of money...

...I have never forgiven anyone I have read and unread the books of my enemies They are dead I am depressed like a big bug that cannot walk "General...

...Come and poke your nose into my ass...

...And then I used to be so innocent With the nightingales at my elbow And the springs snapping their fingers At the end of my arms And an entire school of birds climbed above my shoulders And there were women too With armpits full of clusters of golden grapes And with round mouths Who blew their songs into the reeds of my bones Making me sing and whirl Round all the deserts of the East Planting white villages at every rise and fall of my feet And thoughts appeared in my mind As fresh and warm as the downy heads of newly born infants 338 Let me tell you my friend I used to be innocent Like a camel's face Masticating his turpentine And not even thinking for a second of his neck Reflected in the sun on the dunes of the desert And let me add that I used to be innocent As racemes of stars, luminous, and almost eloquent Cluttered on a couple of oases in an oriental night Imagine bread baking and rising like rivers swelling Imagine grapes squeezed into wine by sweating, female heels Imagine the ritual of drumming fingertips On a man's vertebrae Imagine throwing yourself on the grass and saying, Take me Imagine I used to be innocent What happened on a September day in 1973 Is already an old story But imagine a sieve, or rather, a screen Placed in front of your memories And everything passing through it The faces of all men and women you loved The children you saw and spoke with The grass on which you slept The stars you watched, the camels you rode The rabbits you followed Imagine all of them and other memories Passing through the screen And changing and changing, constantly changing And becoming things which are unrecognizable Imagine all love and beauty kept behind that screen Or memories distorted, standing upside down Or swollen like decomposing flesh Imagine a hell you recognize to have been your personal paradise Imagine I used to be innocent q The Mask of the Dictator Last night my general came to see me We agreed on everything He said the number I had given him was correct I told him the number he had given me was also correct I asked the general about his wife He told me she was always ready I thanked him His wife tells me about the general's bed habits We laugh till we come together The general stood at attention I told him to undress He did like an obedient soldier Naked, he stood like a hairy pig I told him to turn around His hanging buttocks sneered like a double chin I invited him to play checkers with me I had all my ribbons, medals, stars and crowns on The general's shoulders were naked When I won I told him to get up and fart He hunched up his shoulders He squeezed his bowels He pressed the weight of his crimes on his rectum He failed "Your Majesty, I don't have one this time Forgive me, Your Majesty...

...I stand by the mirror My country is a large mirror It shows only me, only me The people, the filthy people, have departed I am past, present and future Bury me standing, if you must Bury me standing, if you must q The Mask of the Exile I want to get up and go see her again The woman as familiar as the desert She sits there by the window Her hands smelling of turnips and the sun The sun that makes her old, The sun that kills her The sun that forgets her Her pygmy eyes know the meaning of exile She knows the corridors of immigration by heart Cars and camels and flies pass But no flowers pass She knows the meaning of her hands Throttled by the veins on her wrists Her share is a wrinkled heart Her feet are weightless Like empty slippers Her womb is a balloon Deflated, its sons gone out What am I doing here...

...The poems that appear below, all touching in one way or another on his traumatic experience with SAVAK, are taken from his recently published book, The Crowned Cannibals, copyright ® 1976, 1977 by Reza Baraheni, a powerful and impassioned attack on the tyranny of the Shah and the bestial methods used by the Shah's agents against Iranian dissidents...

...He was released in December of that year through the efforts of European and American writers and now lives as an exile in the United States...

...I want him to see the galaxies there With his myopic eyes But half-dictators have no vision I throw him out Ring the bell And ask for my naked cabinet to walk in When the birds sing outside I ask all of them to speak at once "Not less than a hundred words in a second, you sons of bitches...

...As E. L. Doctorow writes in his introduction to the book, "Baraheni is chronicler of his nation's torture industry, and poet of his nation's secret police force...

...EDS...

...We are grateful to Random House/ Vintage Books for permission to print these poems...

...During the 102 days of his imprisonment, he was repeatedly tortured and beaten to make him admit to political "treason...