https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013hcr
“Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season ” was first published in a fall 1965 issue of Arash. One of Farrokhzad’s longest and most pensive poems, it begins with a speaker’s personal and individual declaration that implies a whole life behind it:
And this is I
a woman alone
at the threshold of a cold season
at the beginning of understanding
the polluted existence of the earth
and the simple and sad pessimism of the sky
and the incapacity of these concrete hands.
In these opening lines, “Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season” echoes the closing lines of “Those Days,” which Farrokhzad had composed some five years earlier.
In “Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season,” Farrokhzad looks into both the past and the future:
Time passed,
time passed and the clock struck four,
struck four times.
today is the winter solstice.
I know the season’s secrets�.
The wind is blowing through the street,
the beginning of ruination.
I am cold,
I am cold, and it would appear
That I will never be warm again�
I am cold and I know
that nothing will be left
of all the red dreams of one wild poppy
but a few drops of blood.
I shall give up lines
and give up counting syllables too.
and I will seek refuge from the mob
of finite measured forms
in the sensitive planes of expanse.
I am naked, naked, naked,
I am naked as silence between words of love,
and all my wounds come from love,
from loving�
Will I once again
comb my hair with wind?
will I ever again plant pansies in the garden
and set geraniums in the sky
outside the window?
will I ever again dance on wine glasses?
will the doorbell call me again
toward a voice’s expectation?
I said to my Mother, It’s all over now.
I said, Things always happen before one thinks;
we have to send condolences
to the obituary page..
Time passed,
time passed and night fell
over the acacias’s naked limbs,
night slithered on the other side
of the window panes,
and with its cold tongue
sucked in the remains of departed day.
Where am I coming from?
how loving you were when you..
carried me to love’s meadows
through an oppressive darkness
until that whirling smoke, the last gasp
of fiery thirst, settled down
upon the field of sleep.
And those cardboards stars
circled about infinity.
why did they call sounds speech?
why did they welcome the glance
into the house of vision?
why did they carry caresses
to virginity’s timid hair?
look how here
The soul of a person who uttered words
and whom a glance caressed
and whose shying away caresses calmed
has been nailed to the scaffold
of beams of misgivings
and how the tracks of your five-finger branches
which were like five words of truth
have remained upon her cheeks.
What is silence, what is it,
what is it, O dearest one?
what is silence but unspoken words?
I am bereft of speech,
but the sparrows’ language
is the language of life, of flowing sentences
of nature’s celebrations.
the sparrows speak of
spring, leaves, spring,
The sparrows speak of
breeze, fragrance, breeze.
the sparrows’ language dies in a factory.
Who is this, this person headed
for the moment of oneness
over the highway of eternity
and who winds her ever present watch
with the mathematical logic of division and reduction?
who is this, this person
for whom the rooster crowing
is not the day’s first heartbeat
but the smell of breakfast time?
who is this, this person
who wears love’s crown
and is withering in her wedding clothes?
Greetings, O alienation of loneliness,
I’m relinquishing the room to you
because the black clouds always
are prophets of new messages of purity,
and in the martyrdom of a candle
is an incandescent secret which
the last and longest flame well knows.
Let us believe in the beginning
of the cold season.
let us believe in the ruins
of the gardens of imagination.
look, what a heavy snow is falling�
Perhaps the truth was in those two young hands,
those two young hands
buried beneath the never-ending snow.
and next year, when spring
sleeps with the sky beyond the window
and her body exudes
green shoots of light,
branches will blossom, dear dearest one.
Let us believe in the beginning
of the cold season.
https://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/analysis/analysis3.php
LET US BELIEVE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE COLD SEASON
And here I am
a woman alone
at the threshold of a cold season
at the the dawn of realizing earth’s sullied existance
and the sky’s blue despair
and the impotence of these hands made of cement.
Time passed,
time passed and the clock stuck four times,
struck four times.
today is the winter solstice.
I know the secret of seasons,
know the language of moments.
The Messiah sleeps in a grave
and the earth–the hospitable earth–
beckons one to serenity.
Time passed and the clock struck four times.
The wind blows in the alley.
The wind blows in the alley,
and I think of the flowers’ mating,
their slender, anemic blossoms
and this tired tubercular age.
A man passes by the wet trees,
a man whose strings of blue veins
are dead snakes wrapped about
his throat, pounding his angry temples
with those bloodied syllables;
Salaam.
Salaam.
And I think of the flowers’ mating.
On the threshold of a cold season
and in the mimrrors’ grieving vigil,
in faint memories’ mournful wake,
and in this dusk pregnant with wise silence,
how can one cry Stop! to one who moves
so patiently,
heavily,
lost…
How can one say to this man that he is not alive,
that he has never been.
The wind blows in the alley,
and seclusion’s lonely crows
tour the old groves of boredom,
How lowly the ladder’s height.
They carried off a simple heart
to their fairytale palaces,
and now
how can one rise to dance, release
one’s childhood hair into flowing streams,
and crush underfoot the apple she has at last picked,
at last breathed in its perfume?
Beloved, my truest friend,
such black clouds await the sun’s festival
It was as if the bird flew along an imaginary line,
as if the young leaves that sensuously breathed in the breeze
lived in the lines of a green delusion,
as if the purple flame that burned in the window’s chaste mind
were nothing but the innocent fantasy of a lamp.
The wind blows in the alley
and it is the dawn of destruction.
The wind also blew the day your hands fell to ruin.
Dear stars,
dear paper stars,
how can one take refuge in the verses of defeated prophets
when lies blow through the air like wind?
We will meet like those dead for a thousand and thousand years,
and then the sun shall judge the state of our bodies’ decay.
I am cold.
I am cold and I think I will never feel warm again.
Beloved, my truest friend, How aged was that wine?
Look, how heavy time stands here
and how the fish nibble on my flesh.
Why do you always keep me at the bottom of the sea?
I am cold and despise shell earrings,
I am cold and I know nothing will remain
of the red delusions of a wild poppy
but a few drops of blood.
I will let go of lines,
of counting numbers too,
and from among the limits of geometry,
seek refuge in the soul of infinity.
I am naked,
naked, naked, Naked
as the hush between words of love.
My wounds are all exacted by love,
love, love, love.
I guided this wandering isle away
from the ocean’s tempest, away
from the volcanoes’ eruption.
To shatter was the secret of that unbroken body
from whose humblest pieces the sun was born.
Salaam innocent night.
Salaam to you, this night, who transforms the wolves’ eyes
into bony sockets of trust and faith.
Beside your streams, the willows’ souls
are sniffing the axes’ kind souls.
I come from a world of apathetic thoughts, voices, and words.
A world like a snakes’ lair,
a world of footsteps,
of people who embrace you, all the while
weaving in their thoughts ropes to hang you by.
Salaam chaste night.
There is always a gap
between seeing and the window.
Why did I not look?
That time a man passed by wet trees…
Why did I not look?
I think my mother wept that night,
the night I felt the pain and a being formed in my womb,
the night I became an acacia bride, the night
Isfahan’s blue tiles echoed and the one who was half of me
returned to my womb.
I saw his reflection, pure and bright as the mirror
and suddenly he called to me, and I became an acacia bride…
I think my mother wept that night.
How useless the light that fell on this closed door.
Why did I not look?
All the moments of happiness knew
your hands would come to ruin,
and still I did not look.
Not until the clock’s door flew open
and the sad canary sang four times,
four times,
and I met the small woman
with eyes like the phoenix’s empty nests.
With each hurried step it was as if
she carried the virginity of my lavish dreams
to the dark bed of night.
Will I ever again comb my hair with the wind?
Will I ever again plant purple pansies in the garden,
or set geraniums in the sky behind the windowpane?
Will I ever again dance in the faces of wine glasses?
Will I ever again wait anticipating the door bell’s chime?
I told my mother: This is the end.
Before you know it, it shall happen;
let’s send my obituary to the papers.
Hollow human.
Hollow, trusting human.
Look at his teeth singing as they chew,
and his eyes devouring as they stare,
and how he passes the wet trees;
patiently,
heavily,
lost,
at the hour four,
at the very moment his blue veins,
wrapped about his throat like dead snakes,
pound his angry temples
with those bloodied syllables;
Salaam.
Salaam.
Have you
ever smelled
those four water lilies?…
Time passed.
Time passed and night fell
on the acacia’s naked limbs,
glided on the windowpanes,
and with its cold tongue licked away
the remainder of the day.
Where have I been?
Where have I been that my body so smells of the night?
The grave is still soft–
I speak of the grave of two green, young hands…
How kind you were, beloved, my truest friend,
how kind when you lied,
how kind when you closed the mirrors’ eyelids,
loosened the bulbs that hung from their wire branches,
and led me throug the dark to love’s pastures,
until that dizzying stream which follows thirst’s fire
settled on the fields of sleep.
And the paper stars cicling eternity,
why did they voice their words?
Why did they take seeing to the house of visitation?
Why did they take caressing to the modesty of a virgin’s hair?
Look how the one who spoke with words,
caressed with eyes, and was tamed by touch
was nailed to the cross of apprehensions;
how the branches of your fingers
like five letters otf truth
left a mark on her cheek.
What is silence, what is it, my trusted friend?
What is silence but unspoken words?
I am bereft of words, but the sparrows language
is nature’s unyielding euphoric flow.
The sparrows’ language means: spring, leaves, spring.
The sparrows’ language means: breeze, fragrance, breeze.
The sparrows’ language dies at the factory.
Who is this, she walking eternity’s road
towards the moment of fusion? She who winds her watch
with childhood’s logic of subtractions and additions?
She for whom the day does not begin
with roosters’s crow but with breakfast’s aroma?
She who wears love’s crown
and has withered in the folds of her wedding gown?
And so in the end
the sun did not shine at once on both poles of despair.
You drained of the blue tiles’ echoes.
I am so brimming full that people pray over my voice…
Lucky corpses.
Tired corpses.
Silent pensive corpses.
Social, chic, well-fed stiffs
in the stations of regularity
and beneath suspiciously temporary lights,
who lustily buy futility’s rotten fruits…
How they stand at intersections, worred about accidents
and whisltes commanding Stop!
at the very moment when a man
must, must, must
be crushed beneath the wheels of time,
a man who passes by wet trees…
where have I been?
I told my mother: This is the end.
Before you know it, it shall happen;
let’s send my obituary to the papers.
Salaam strange loneliness.
I concede this room to you because
black clouds always are prophets
of new purifying verses,
and in a cancle’s martyrdom lies a resplendent secret
that its last and tallest flame grasps.
Let us believe,
let us believe in the dawn of the cold season.
Let us believe in the ruin of imaginary gardens,
in idle inverted scythes,
in confined seeds.
Look how it snows…
Perhaps the truth was those two young hands,
those young hands
buried beneath snow–
and in the coming year
when spring mates with sky behind the window,
fountains of green saplings will erupt–
saplings that bloom, beloved, my truest friend.
Let us believe in the dawn of the cold season…