As our children leave home for college, my husband and I have begun to dream up the journeys we will take together, just the two of us. But as we dream and plan, I am reminded of the simplicity of true romance, the richness and adventure and fullness that is two people in love, exploring.

In writing this poem, I was compelled by the idea that this planet we’re steadily destroying is so magnificent that even its deterioration can look, at times, beautiful.

My husband and I managed many things in our youth, but we did not manage Paris until forty years into our marriage. The poem references our last afternoon in Paris after a splendid two weeks in France.

I have lived in a house, in the middle of six acres of wood, for 45 years. But as my 86th birthday approaches, I am reluctantly thinking of downsizing. Thus the poem.

In the hands of writers who have the confidence to depart from the rules, poetic forms can marshal tremendous power. Poems like today’s show us just how effectively this can be done.

This is one of the best political poems I’ve ever read, and I hope you will find yourself as moved by it as I am.

Forough Farrokhzad wrote when, as now, Iranian women faced deeply-rooted and widespread discrimination and prejudice, and she is widely regarded as Iran’s leading women poet and an advocate for women’s liberation and independence everywhere.