You Are a Woman By: Meetra Sofia
You are a woman Night and day the strength of your face Where will you wander If your womb refuses to send a gentler race? A mother once was Slightly more an angel On whom will the stars shine If your heart holds no space for refusal? Bending voice of laughter You have your fate to protect A design of wild abandon With invisible your spirit softly decked Open up before The dragon flings its fire When will the garden grow If of the world you tire? Peace plunges a stone Into your ocean of neglect You spill But in your skirt freedom and friendship collect From your hips and thighs A legend bursts toward the curve of your breast Your mind an element Your soul accepts the gesture to live Meetra A. Sofia is a writer, poet, artist, translator and filmmaker. She is the first to have translated much of Forough Farokhzad’s poetry, letters and writing into English as part of her forthcoming book IF I WERE GOD: Forough Farokhzad, the Girl Poet in Tehran. Her translations have been featured in American Poetry Review, Irandokht: http://www.irandokht.com/editorial/index4.php?area=pro§ionID=8&editorialID=1122&subsectionID=15 and World Literature Today: http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2009july/Farokhzad-poem.html Meetra dedicates her poem ‘You Are a Woman’ first published in Persian Heritage to the people of Iran and to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.