Preface to Selected Poems: Hoshang Merchant

Morning rain Mourning 

Rain sobbing like a cold puppy 

Rain like needles stitching a shroud 

Mending the rent garment of my life 

Washing it to make it new 

My poems all rained upon 

As if my lovers wept over my letters

 It should have rained poems over the world 

My poems sobbing like a cold puppy 

My children laugh 

They do not know everything I do is for them 

They are the rain refreshing the world 

They are the needles piecing together 

     .                                 my rent body 

The words you drink are not wine

                                        but blood 

The tears you see are not water

                                       but wine

* 

Everyone comes to eat my body 

Everyone comes to drink my soul 

Everyone is hungry for a body 

Everyone is thirsty for a soul 

I left a poem on a page 

As a mark of my passage through this earth 

My children search me on this page burning

I have opened my eyes to become the Sun 

(Parsi New Year, 1999)