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 multi-genre writer and humanitarian. A Pushcart Prize winner and recipient of a United Nations humanitarian award, her work has been translated into more than twenty languages, set to music, adapted into short films, and performed internationally at venues including the Canadian Parliament and the United Nations World Food Programme. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Atlanta Review, PEN America, and Asymptote. Her books include Jahan Malek Khatun: The Princess Poet of Fourteenth-Century Persia (Daraja Press, 2026); the chapbook Starfish Regrow Their Arms (Anhinga Press, 2026), winner of the Rick Campbell Chapbook Award; the chapbook The War Took Our Names (Seven Kitchens Press, 2026), selected for the Allison Joseph Series; Spoon and Shrapnel (Daraja Press, 2024); and Echoes in Exile (PRA Publishing, 2006), which was featured on Stony Brook University's Women and Gender Studies reading list. She is also the editor and translator of The Poetry of Iranian Women (Reel Content, 2009) and Seven Valleys of Love: A Bilingual Anthology of Women Poets from Medieval Persia to Present-Day Iran (PRA Publishing, 2008).

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

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