From Desire to Disillusion: Three Poems by Ahmad Shamlu

Extract

The three poems that follow depict a moment of transition in the course of topical poetry in contemporary Iran. The advent of the revolution caught many modernist Iranian poets off guard, particularly because it did not seem to confirm their vision of revolution. Secular and predominantly leftist, Iranian poets and writers anticipated a socialist revolution and were surprised at the revolutionary potential of Shiᶜite Islam. These poems, written in 1978-1979, depict the speaker in the act of acknowledging the passage of one era and the advent of another while at the same time distancing himself from its increasingly religious cast. In the first poem, “Akher-e bazi” (End of the Game), the poet seems to welcome the demise of an unwanted political order through an utterance that can be read as an address to its chief personage, perhaps even the person of the last Iranian monarch.