“Solace of the Eyes” a song for tahirih, first woman martyr of our Faith
(1817-52)
It was to be a morning hanging. Under house arrest
you bathed & stayed awake in prayer.
You chose your final raiment, your own wedding dress
with a single trusted servant
& like a bride, rode sidesaddle to your coming death
But your executioner drunk already hurled stones,
stoned you, stone by jagged stone by senseless stone
in mumbling staggering parody of all you were & threw your body
down a midnight well. The crescent moon your solitary silent witness.
The sleeping sun failed to appear.
Your guilty crimes: you wrote your meter & your verse
in Farsi language, persian poetry little known then in the West
But in the East, so subtly potent to express
the painted passion & the subtle fury of the strength you felt within your breast.
In English few have known the raga of your rhythm,
the metered meaning of your rhyme. In America in your time
other women unbeknownst were raising up their voices
one by one, courageously as you
& had gathered in their first conflagrating conference that very week
but never knew
across the world a woman of your beauty or your poetry unfurled
behind the veil, a pure one, consolation, a “solace of the eyes”--
whose lines had cried for women everywhere
& chanted out in faith for higher love & justice
& understanding & life’s sacred holy purity
whose final written words decried her death decree
but still did not once plead for amnesty.
Tahirih! Tahirih! The knot they chose to murder you
would not provide a speedy end or give you mercy
would fail to simply twig-like snap the neck so delicate
it drove weak men to honor savagery
but instead designed to torture you
with slow humiliating suffering-- a knot to
squeeze each breath from deep within
to watch its victim kick & gasp for breath & beg for death--
to face open-eyed if veiled & hooded once again.
It would not be. For all that was taken in that wrenching travesty
restored, assured you once again immortality, the heart to face
the specter death without a fear, except that spirit
Be crushed too & taken down
& that, to rob from thee thy Soul, the essence of thy gifted breath,
pure Tahirih, was not a thing that men--
no matter of the greatest or of smallest count—
in all the worlds of God! could ever do
& but ensured that every moaning longing captivatingly revealed
would now for man’s own future history
be seen & known around the world,
unquestionably true.
