In Praise of Integrity
By Majid Naficy
The rights become left
And the lefts become right
But integrity remains:
The integrity of a human being
Not allowing herself to be broken
Like Ezzat, who in Evin Prison
Welcomed her death,
Although she loved life.
In praise of integrity
One must write a poem
Which speaks of beauty, truth, and goodness,
Equally.
Majid Naficy, the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry, fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife, Ezzat in Tehran. Since 1984 Majid has been living in West Los Angeles. He has published two collections of poetry in English Muddy Shoes (Beyond Baroque, Books, 1999) and Father and Son (Red Hen Press, 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation at UCLA Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature: A Return to Nature in the Poetry of Nima Yushij (University Press of America, 1997). Majid has also published more than twenty books of poetry and essay in Persian.
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