Below are poems, all written by Iranians. Exiled Writers Ink submits these poems as part of Arts United 4 Iran in celebration of the civil rights movement in Iran. These poems first appeared in Exiled Ink magazine Issue 12, autumn/winter 2009. Below is the image of the cover of the magazine in which the poetry appeared.
Censorship Ali Abdolrezaei In the massacre of my words They’ve beheaded my last line And blood ink-like is hitting on paper There’s death stretched over the page And life like a window ajar shattered by a rock A new gun has finished off the world And I imported-goods-like through this alley’s doors Am still the very meagre room that emigrated I in my life who am pen-like to the lines of this meagre page am mother The cat’s paws are still prancing To scare the mouse Running for the hole they filled In pursuit of the lesson I did at school I’m no longer Jack the lover to my Jill I’m doing my new homework You cross it out And in the girl who will tumble at this poem’s end Build a house Filled with a door open like a wound And from in between the edges of death Like a room gone from this house Lived happily a girl who wanting to make me her own Would throw morsels in her voice to tease me over To the temple of her body For my eyes to keep whirling and whirling to make a Dervish of me again How the eyes These empty sockets In between the love-making of two are thousand-handed How this side of being where I am is all the more other-sided in Iran Fathurt mothurt my brothurt! My condition is more critical than hurt Writing’s more emasculated than me And London with its hair highlights of a weather is still Sisterly awaiting Death to stretch over my body For life to kill me again My heart is bleeding for the poet whose queue of words is getting longer For the branchless sparrow who’s swallowed its twitter For the restitution of a crow with no overhead wire For myself Gone from the house like electricity I was somebody Did the foolish thing became a poet
The Marchers Turn Green by Majid Naficy In memory of Neda and her friends (1) Like the sprouts of wheat Which must grow green, The marchers turn green. (2) They have green ballots in their hands And red passion in their veins, Oblivious to death Who is wearing a dirty turban And a long dark robe. “This land belongs to us Not to the men in turbans Or any supreme leader, And the proof is in our votes.” The marchers turn green With a telling silence in their lips And an echo of freedom in their ears. They are fearless of death Who is wearing a paper helmet And a wooden dagger. “This land belongs to us Not to the men with daggers, And the wound of a sword Cannot sever our united hands From the skirt of our motherland.” The marchers turn green With the branches of cypress in their hands And a glimmer of hope in their eyes. The young Rakhsh horses neigh (3) And immortal Symorgh flies (4) From mount Alborz toward them. “This land belongs to us And we’ll take it back Not with bullets or grenades But by counting our ballots.”
June, 25, 2009
1. Neda Agha-Soltan was a student of philosophy killed by the government forces on a mass demonstration against the rigged presidential election in Tehran on June 20, 2009. Her first name means “call” or “echo” referred to in this poem as “an echo of freedom” in the second stanza. 2. Green is the color of the June uprising against the rigged election and represents the non-violent nature of this movement. 3. Rakhsh is the horse of the mythological Iranian, hero, Rostam. 4. Symorgh is the name of a mythological bird helping Rostam in some of his battles. She raises Rostam’s father in Mt. Alborz.
“And yet it does turn!” Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)