One of my favourite Persian poems is عصیان بندگی (The Servant’s Rebellion) by Forugh Farrokhzad. Born in Tehran in 1934, Farrokhzad became one of Iran’s defining modernist poets and also a filmmaker before her death in 1967, at only 32. Across five poetry collections, she wrote with a directness, intimacy and defiance that Persian literature had not heard from a woman before.

The Servant’s Rebellion opens her third collection, Rebellion, published in 1958. It begins as a question and expands into a trial: the speaker indicts a God who creates both the sinner and the temptation, grants neither humanity nor Satan an independent will, then punishes them for following the nature he supplied. Its final request is modest enough to make the accusation devastating: leave us alone for one moment, let the choice actually be ours, and only then judge what follows.

Listen

The Rebel Cry, drawn from part of the English translation:

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The complete English translation is available in two editions:

• PDF — a fixed-layout, typeset reader’s edition.
• EPUB — a reflowable ebook with light and dark themes.