WHERE IS THE HEART UNTEMPERED . . . by Jahan Malek Khatun, translated from Persian by Sheema Kalbasi

Where is the heart untempered by despair,

Whose strands, unlike his dark hair, never entwine?

The world has wearied mine with cruelty and spite,

For only union with my friend can set it right.

I find contentment in a greeting or a glance,

Yet cry at love’s injustice and its dire expanse.

Though all admire the crescent of the feast,

It bends not like my lover’s brow, nor shines at least.

O morning breeze, pass gently by his side,

And say that grief alone is now my guide.

And if he asks how fares this mortal sphere,

Say only warmth of heart and cold sighs linger here.

The world grants leisure from its weary tide,

But since I saw his face, my peace has died.

If any healer claims my wound to mend,

Tell him my only pain is love that will not end.

My heart beneath a cypress by the stream found rest,

For still his stately shadow on my soul is pressed.

Author and translator bios:

Jahan Malek Khatun (circa 1324–1382 CE) was a Persian princess and one of the few medieval women poets whose complete divan survives. A member of the Injuid dynasty, she lived in Shiraz during a period of political upheaval and literary brilliance. Her poetry, composed primarily in the ghazal form, engages with themes of love, loss, transience, and the social limitations placed upon women. Writing in a refined and distinctly personal idiom, she reinterpreted the conventions of classical Persian lyricism to articulate a female consciousness rarely recorded in premodern Persian literature. Her verse displays both the intellectual rigor and emotional depth characteristic of the fourteenth-century Shirazi school, situating her alongside her contemporaries such as Hafez while offering a singularly feminine perspective within that tradition.

Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian Danish American poet, humanitarian, and historian. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, is a recipient of a United Nations humanitarian award, and has received grants from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Her books include Echoes in Exile (PRA Publishing, 2006), which was listed in Stony Brook University’s Women and Gender Studies curriculum; Seven Valleys of Love (PRA Publishing, 2008); The Poetry of Iranian Women (Reel Content, 2008); Spoon and Shrapnel (Daraja Press, 2024); and Jahan Malek Khatun: The Princess Poet of Fourteenth-Century Persia (Daraja Press, 2026). Her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and has been featured by PEN America, Writer’s Digest, PBS, and NPR. Her poems have been set to music, adapted into short films, and performed internationally at venues including the Smithsonian National Museum, The Writers Studio, the Tribute World Trade Center, and the Canadian Parliament.

© Jahan Malek Khatun. Translation © by Sheema Kalbasi. All rights reserved.

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