No to War

My Country, I Will Build You Again

My country, I will build you again,
if need be, with bricks made from my life.
I will build columns to support your roof,
if need be, with my bones.
I will inhale again the perfume of flowers
favored by your youth.
I will wash again the blood off your body
with torrents of my tears.
Once more, the darkness will leave this house.
I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky.
The resurrector of “old bones” will grant me in his bounty
a mountain’s splendor in his testing grounds.
Old I may be, but given the chance, I will learn.
I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny.
I will recite the Hadith of “love and country”
with such fervor as to make each word bear life.
There still burns a fire in my breast
to keep undiminished the warmth of kinship
I feel for my people.
Once more you will grant me strength,
though my poems have settled in blood.
Once more I will build you with my life,
though it be beyond my means.
 
– Simin Behbahani, Iran 1999

All eyes on Iran and Palestine

I catch myself breathless in fear and horror at the growing conflagration in the Middle East and the despicable actions of those in power in the West. I am without words. So I am asking you, my community, to keep your eyes – unblinkered by the propaganda of mainstream media – on Iran and Palestine and never stop talking about Palestine, the moral test of our time.

With the world’s attention on Iran which Israel and the US has attacked without provocation, innocent Palestinians are massacred by the IDF as they queue for scarce food. And Palestinians who live in Israel are denied access to shelters from the bombs.