In my small night, alas
the wind has a rendezvous with the leaves of trees
In my small night rests the fear of ruin
Listen…
Do you hear the blowing of the darkness?
I look at this good luck like a stranger
I am accustomed to my hopelessness
Listen…
Do you hear the blowing of the darkness?
In the night now something is happening:
the moon is red and disturbed
and above this roof, which at any moment might fall,
the clouds like the crowds of mourners
seem to await the moment of rain
A moment
and after that nothing.
Behind this window the night is trembling,
and the earth
stands still in its course
Vague things lie behind this window,
you and I, uneasy
O you are green all over,
put your hands like a burning memory in my loving hands
and entrust your lips like a warm sense of life
to the caresses of loving lips
The wind will carry us away with it
The wind will carry us away.
This is a poem by Forugh Farrukhzad (1935-1967), one of Iran’s most beloved poets. Her poem gives the title to Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami’s 1999 film The Wind Will Carry Us and it’s recitation by the main character of that film forms the crux of the movie.
I’ve come to this story a bit late, but I’ve just read the various reports that started circulating a few days ago about the world-renowned Kiarostami being denied a visa to enter the United States for this year’s New York Film Festival. Kiarostami, in my humble opinion the creator of some of the most sublime cinema of the last 15 years, was denied the visa under new stricter guidelines the Bush administration has created regarding the admittance of people from the “axis of evil” country Iran. (This comes at the same time that legendary Iranian pop singer Googoosh had to cancel concerts in California last week because she couldn’t get a visa to enter the country.)
That this action is entirely predictable and unsurprising is comment enough on the American short-sightedness that governs its bloated self-important “with us or against us” posturing. The irony here is plain for anyone who wants to see it: barring Kiarostami from entry is a vote for anti-reformist Iranian fundamentalism, not against it. Of course, Kiarostami’s political statement, his method of reform as it were, is one which would be lost on Bush and Co. anyway, for it is not one stilted in rhetoric but rather one steeped of poetry, of humanism, of difficult questions void of simple answers or dichotomies, of mysteries with no beginning or end, of morality too complicated to have room for the banalities of “good” or “evil”.
Kiarostami, and indeed all Iranian filmmakers, poets, artists, create their works of art under at times extreme censorship and repression, each finding their own way of expression within contricting limitations. Not to put to fine a point on it, but American artists would do well to observe how they’ve done it, and to take good notes, for this insight may come in handy in the near future.
The above poem was taken from A Brief Note on Forugh Farrukhzad’s Life, which features a short biography, a chronology of Farrukhzad’s life, as well as a few poems. For two good analyses of Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, both as a film and as a political statement, see reviews by Jonathan Rosenbaum and David Walsh.
