Love Or Loneliness
(A Piece in Triplet Addressed to Dr Monir Táhá)*
Yes, we’re mountains, all together yet alone,
From foot to crown of rock and with hearts of stone.
Unmoved by all, moving none, we’re on our own.
To this song on the way of love that you hear
I’ve listened too for an age, year after year,
And have shed tears as from an arrow or spear.
I don’t beg for love now that I’m old and grey,
Melted away in solitude, but I say,
Like the waters, one by one we drift away.
1.31.’13
* The renowned Iranian lyricist and chairlady of the department of the Italian language & literature, University of Tehran, who used to stop on her way to stare at me for several bothering, lengthy minutes in the corridors in mid-1970s and who did something most abhorrent to me in an Italian course final exam; just to remind her how
Everything alters
And one by one we drop away
— Composed while still listening to “The Way of Love” by the late Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum which I listened to in solitude shedding tears when I was a teenager, and having in mind Matthew Arnold’s poem “To Marguerite — Continued”, W. B. Yeats’ poems “When You are Old” and “The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Waters”, as well as a poem by the late Iranian poet Shámloo the title of which I can’t remember
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Copyright © A. Hemmati | Year Posted 2020
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