zarah and persian boys

[lobelia321]

Can I just say how lovely it is to have zarah5 back in the fray?

Okay, then: it is fucking lovely to have zarah5 back in the fray!

:-)

P.S. Did several hours of DP research yesterday! Read my way through several tomes of mediaeval Persian poetry and a book analysing poetic metaphor in Persian poetry. Then picked up Italo Calvino's Why Read the Classics? -- have I ever mentioned that I adore and love Italo Calvino and that he'd be the one person I'd conjure back from the dead to sit at my dinner table and converse with?? -- and whaddayaknow: his third chapter is on Nizami's Seven Princesses -- which I've read!!! *falls down at own erudition*

And also, guess what: Persian poetry praises the beauty of youths non-stop. The black curls, the face like a moon, the lips like roses, the gazelle-eyes, and the down of a youthful beard -- it's boy-love paradise! Apparently, modern critics have bent over backwards in attempting to explain all this away as veiled references to women whose beauty was forbidden -- yeah, right.



Kemal Khojand
died 1401?

One final fling

a restatement of a point of view

Wind in your hair
my palms and fingers plough
through and through and through,
oh god, live for ever
young and beautiful.

my fingers plough...

You turn my winter into spring
and all I bring: tears for lips
that hold my tongue. Stay young
even if not for me, stay young.

Soon you must go
and leave me living
like the blind
feeling but the edge of things
until my final burst
of dying brings
the luxury of death,
before I grow unkind.

Comments

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

Oh! *sighs and quivers* Do you have any more? Or recommendations of books to get?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I found this poem here: - Omar Pound, Arabic & Persian Poems, Lo: Fulcrum Press, 1970

Also, anything by Nizami (don't know if it's available easily: I got old editions from t'reference library but I saw one advertised online somewhere). Also: Rumi. Abu Nuwas who was homosexual and wrote this (found online):

LOVE IN BLOOM
by Abu Niwas, 8th C.

I die of love for him, perfect in every way,
Lost in the strains of wafting music.
My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body
And I do not wonder at his beauty.
His waist is a sapling, his face a moon,
And loveliness rolls off his rosy cheek
I die of love for you, but keep this secret:
The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope.
How much time did your creation take, O angel?
So what! All I want is to sing your praises.

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

oh! oh yes. I feel like I may have read this one before (from beccaming, perhaps?). almost too exquisite.

thank you so much for the recommendations!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think Becca once recced the site with the Abu Nuwas poems!

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Oh, these are just scrumptious! *rolls around in Persian boy-love*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, and did you read the Abu Nuwas I posted for thejennabides below? See why I love DP. Even when I'm not writing it, I'm soaking up all this poetry!

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did see the other one you posted. I'm going to have to find some of this stuff. It's great that you're reading this when you're not writing. I'm sure it colors the way you write DP.