Later On Poem by Forough Farrokhzad

My death will arrive one day,
It may be a bright, spring dawn,
It may be a distant winter dusk,
Or perhaps a silent night-
of a foggy, frozen fall.

That day,
gloomy, bright or cloudy, yet,
it will be an empty day-
like all the rest:
a figment of the future,
a picture of the past.

That day,
My eyes like dark holes,
My face like cold marbles;
I’ll be taken away in a swift sleep,
leaving behind my colorful dreams.

My hands will fall on the pallor of a page,
My rhyming thoughts will flee from their cage,
My mind losing to the vibration of this last verse;
And then, there will be no sorrow, no pain-
no rage.


The Earth,
incessantly calling my name,
so they will arrive to place me inside the grave.
Oh, perhaps my lovers, at all midnights-
will put some flowers on my lone place.

Then,
the thick shades of my world-
will be suddenly pulled away:
In the full moon-light, one night-
strangers will read on my rhymes…

They will step in my little room,
a sunny day, in my memory.
Next to my mirror yet, they will find
a lock of my hair,
the signs of life-
my fingerprints.

My soul,
like a sailboat,
It will escape,
free of myself and missing from my corpse.
I will fade away at the borders of sight,
like a vagabond kite,
in an endless flight.

Days so quickly get to weeks,
And weeks become months as fast;
You’ll stare into eyes of the clock,
waiting in vain my letters, my calls.

But then,
My lifeless body will calmly rest-
far from you and the pounds of your heart-
in the voiceless arms of Mother Earth.

Later on,
The sun, the wind and the rain,
will polish the cold stone of my grave:
And lastly I'll be free-
forever free-
from the myths of return,
name and fame.


Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani, July 2006, Montreal.