Accompany Me
—a poem by Farnood Jahangiri

Accompany me into the holiest ditches
Where filth decides and piety retreats;
Where owls abide on collapsed towers,
It must be where love shows riches.

Before going, the candle of our pride
Extinguish we must and give a way
To a starless darkness, and drive away
Any sinless souls that might in us confide.


Assemble all our bags – packs of human sin:
Behind your mother’s fault, my father’s guilt.
Malice of men drink rushing in your blood
As I eat out the lust of all women within


Let others think of us like betrayers and whores!
What can they know, what can they know
About the Saints’ Affairs?
                                How could they see
For them we abandoned shores?


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Farnood Jahangiri is an Iranian Baha'i who became a student of English at BIHE after being expelled from University in Iran, and has been have been telling poetry since 15 years of age, first in Persian and then in English.