Iran: A Poem for Executed Teacher Farzad Kamangar

On 9 May, teacher Farzad Kamangar was executed with four other Iranians: Farhad Vakili, Mehdi Eslamian, Shirin Alamhouli, and Ali Heydarian. Days after the event, we published a poem by Simin Behbahani.

An EA correspondent has sent us another poem, written in remembrance of Kamangar, by Fatemeh Shams:

Iran Document: Simin Behbahani’s Poem for the Executed

It was autumn… I have not seem Newton
Nor have I plucked the red apple of Gravity

It was autumn, the gallows rising, a chair
Go up, don’t fall, tell everyone you flew away


It was autumn, the chair shook a bit
The apple fell, I tasted God

It was autumn, gravity means you hanging at the gallows
After you I have banned gravity

It was autumn, gravity is an absolute lie
I have drawn your likeness suspended, lifeless

I am suspended between earth and your memories
I have breathed your memories into all the elegies

The execution of the order, your death without further ado
I have run, one with your naked feet

It was autumn, I’ve seen Newton, But especially you
Smiling, the way autumn does.

Iran Document: Simin Behbahani's Poem for the Executed

The revered poet Simin Behbahani, barred from leaving Iran, has written a poem for the five Iranians --- Farzad Kamangar, Farhad Vakili, Mehdi Eslamian, Ali Heydarian, and Shirin Alamhouli --- executed on 9 May. Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz of Washington University of St. Louis provides the translation:

Not one, not two ...they were five and yet I don't know why
In my mind, they were more like fifty.
And, how is it possible that gallows
Were, someday, trees that did not surrender to axes?

Tell me how to write about the treehood days of the gallows:
Standing firm for freedom, they dug their heels in the meadow.
When the breeze found them in the orchard and wrapped itself around their branches
Their message reached everyone in soft playful dances.

Now, heads have grown on them, heads hanging from broken necks,
Heads of full-bodied figures, perhaps champions in their own way.
Left waiting, feet-dangling-in-the-air, utterly robbed of their words,
These heads whose stories could have filled many books!
Only clouds could now rain tears on their broken bodies,
For mothers were not united with them even after their death.

Don't waste a complaint on the faithless judge, who
Was the enemy, not of darkness and tyranny, but of the Giver of life.