Portside

Hanging Mohsen on the Gallows

By Majid Naficy

In Memory of Mohsen Shekari

Oh, Rain!

How long do you pound on my roof

And disrupt my sleep?

Are you coming from the prison gate

Where yesterday, Mohsen’s mother

Shouted from her depth

Upon hearing the news of her son’s execution?

I open the window

To hear her shouts better

From the prison and the gallows

From the burial and her mourning.

I want to return to the streets of Iran

To stand with Mahsas and Mohsens

Speaking of woman, life, freedom

Until capital punishment is abolished

The hanging Mullahs stand at courts

And the age of humanity begins.

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 essays in Persian. His son, Azad is a singer and songwriter. Read more about Majid Naficy on Wikipedia:

https://iroon.com/irtn/blog/17531/

He adds: Majid Reza Rahnavard's last words before being hanged in Mashhad on December 12, 2022: "Don't weep, don't pray or recite the Quran at my grave. Instead, be joyful and play happy music".