Parvin’s First Poem

I knew that the boy who broke his water pot was suffering from orphanage – a bad pain. I was thanking God a thousand times every day for having a kind father. He was a scholar, writer and poet. He was a journalist and a researcher as well. His heart was full of knowledge and kindness. He had great friends, just like Bahar [meaning spring] who was the spring of Iranian poetry in our era. Bahar always asked my father to get my poems published, but my father didn't agree. Finally, on the insistence of Bahar and other friends, my father got some of my poems published in the magazine. I will never forget that day. I was sitting on the brim of our orchard, reading Hafiz’s poems when my father arrived. He was very happy. As if his eyes too were smiling out of happiness. As if my father was happier than me for the publication of my poems. He came forward, planted a kiss on my forehead. He pulled a magazine out of his bag and gave it to me. It was the Bahar Magazine. He said: “Get it, find your own poems in the Bahar Magazine!”

It seems that the magazine had just rolled out of the press. It was still fresh and had a pleasant smell. A smell I liked and was acquainted with. When I was younger, I had smelled this odor in my father’s room, which was full of books and magazines. For sometime I was thinking that the smell was that of my father not of the books. That day when I read my poem in the magazine I became very happy and developed a strange feeling. I felt that the poem was alien to me and as if it was the verses of another poet undersigned by me. That day and night from morning to evening I opened the magazine a number of times and read my verses. Reading of that poem gave me a joy that my unpublished verses didn't.

Translated by: Sadroddin Musawi