As I told you recently in my article "Leila and Me [1]", there was a time following a relationship with a Persian man when I went under. And I showed you the poem I came back with. About two months before that I had written a poem called "Thirty Birds". It was a very different journey. It also dealt with going under, but it was an ascent, rather than a descent, into light.

He was a self-styled Sufi, the man in question, and as you no doubt know the title "Thirty Birds" comes from Attar's Simorgh in "The Conference of the Birds." Attar's seventh and final stage of the Sufi's journey, fanaa (extinction) is often translated into English as the Valley of Death. It is an erroneous translation but it fit the experience revealed in this poem.

This poem was revealed to me. Let us not argue from whence, whether from the sub- or super-consciousness, and simply accept that, as with the Leila poem, I had no conscious choice or will in its making, only in the editing.

It revealed itself with Attar's journey as the central metaphor, but it also revealed the presence of Ahriman/Angra Manyu, Ahura Mazda's opponent. I envisioned him somehow very strongly as Khomeini engaged in a battle with the "songgirl", Forough, for the soul of Iran and the world.

Yet the poem also revealed intense Christian symbols: steeples and bells, a saying of Jesus, also as in Attar the top of the mountain. And it is fitting because in reality the spirituality of Iran is a complex synthesis of many religions. including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Turkic shamanism with Mazdaism and Islam.

I just learned that Balkh, where Rumi came from, was until the advent of Islam for a thousand years a great center of Buddhism. And I wonder how much that age-old substratum influenced his vision.

The relationship between Ashura and the Christian flagellantis has been a recent topic of conversation on this website. And under the Sassanids, despite their oppressions, the fertile genius of the Iranian imagination gave birth to ever newer religions, to Mazdakism and to Manichaeism. Later, of course, came the Bahai.

The true religion of Iran, Iran's true spirituality, has all names and no name.

Suffering in Shiism, as in others of the religions which form Iran's spirituality, is seen as an essential part of purification. But the purification achieved through suffering should lead to a catharsis and a new dawn. That is to say, to joy.

To Light.

******

THIRTY BIRDS

for j.

 

You said at the end I would find myself

That every journey is about ourselves

I trusted your hand and in silence

I went.

We walked across valleys filled with birds

and the seventh one was the valley of death

In Death Valley you rested your head on my breasts

as the clouds caress the mountains with erosion.

And then I saw you recede in the distance

and then I saw nothing but Death

 

I slept.

 

I never intended to wake

but I woke

and somehow I was on top of the mountain

something had pulled me up

and I looked

and I saw steeples

and I heard

 

birds birds hundreds of birds

flapping their wings

bathed in light

I heard everything

the screams of delight

the pain of the dying

the crystalline beauty of the bells

you

 

and angriman was there

angriman too

and his jackdaws

and the songgirl he hurled

into the wall

and the crashing of the glass

and the wretched earth

and the poor ye shall have with you always

but why?

 

and then there were only thirty birds

the mountain the mind and memory and erosion.

I saw a young child alone by a road

I remembered her name.

She had once been me.

I felt her recoil from a slap on the face.

I knew who she was.

I understood.

 

We have all been abandoned

we have all been slapped

the mountain on which I stood

had been struck

 

the birds too

had all been struck

every flapping

every

flutter every

leprous feather

struck

 

and

 

my father

struck

by the love he could not give

and my mother by the love

she gave too much

 

and terror and

feathers

and

fear of the road

 

and the idiot angriman

foaming invectives

 

and you who had left me

you too

struck

 

and then

 

everything was

me

and

you and

thirty birds

 

and my father

and my mother and

 

one bird only

 

and I knew

I had reached

the end of my journey

 

and the motherfather

 

and I wept.