NEDA

Tags

IRAN, Iranian poetry, NEDA SOLTANI

Yesterday a young woman died on the streets of Tehran.  Within hours of the tragedy the Internet was full of cell-phone images of her last breath.  Today, Neda is the face of Iran’s crisis.  At one moment she is a girl strolling the streets alongside her (father*) music teacher, more an observer than a participant in the demonstrations; at the next moment an assassin’s bullet and her comrades’ cell-phone cameras transform Neda into a bleeding corpse and an immortalized martyr.  As her(father’s*) comrades’ painful cries linger in our ears, a poet’s voice sings of her death. The only beauty in this tragedy is her face, and the knowledge that still, at this moment, the death of one girl is worthy of our attention — all too soon the dead will have no name.

*CORRECTION: The man walking with Neda, originally reported to be her father, was later identified as her music teacher.

NEDA (You Will Not Defeat The People!)

Neda was a young girl
She would not wear the hijab
She walked out on the streets of Tehran
To join the madding crowd

She felt a burning fire in her chest
And her blood began to flow
You will not defeat the people
When their lust for freedom grows

Down down go the concrete statues
Watch the faceless soldiers run
You will not defeat the people
When they learn that freedom’s fun

Neda was a young girl
Her eyes were black as coal
She walked out on to the streets of Tehran
To take back some control

Watch her father with her face in his hands
Screaming out into the sky
You will not defeat the people
When they learn that they can fly

(First verse again…)

You will not defeat the people
When it’s freedom that they know
You will not defeat the people
Crying Neda in the streets
You will not defeat the people
Crying Neda in their sleep.

Written & Sung by Johnny Maudlin

Thanks to my friend Saeid for introducing me to Neda.

LINK:  NEDA AGHA-SOLTAN AT WIKIPEDIA

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POEM FROM THE ROOFTOPS OF IRAN

Tags

IRAN, Iranian poetry

Here is a simple but shattering poem delivered with all the sensitivity of a poet speaking her words as she feels them pulsating through her body.  Her film shows the depth of the darkness that falls on her people as they chant Allah-o Akbar into the heavy emptiness of the night.

Transcript of the English subtitles from Youtube

This is Iran

Friday the 19^th of June, 2009

Tomorrow, Saturday

Tomorrow is a day of destiny

Tonight the cries of Allah-o Akbar

are heard louder and louder than the nights before

Where is this place?

Where is this place where every door is closed?

Where is this place where people are simply calling God?

Where is this place where the sound

of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?

I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder

and whether the number increases

It shakes me

I wonder if God is shaken

Where is this place where

so many innocent people are entrapped?

Where is this place where no one comes to our aid?

Where is this place where only with our silence

we are sending our voices to the world?

Where is this place where where the young shed blood

and the people go and pray?

Standing on that same blood and pray…

Where is this place where the citizens

are called vagrants?

Where is this place?

You want me to tell you?

This place is Iran.

The homeland of you and me

This place is Iran.

NARCISSUS FLOWER

Tags

IRAN, Iranian poetry, Majid Naficy

I offer this poem of loss by Majid Naficy (b. 1952) in honor of the daring democratic people of Iran.  Nacify’s lyrical pen pricked the Shah’s sensibilities in the early 1970s, then drew revolutionary blood as his wife and brother fell to the bitter whim of the Shah’s pious successors. The poet fled his homeland in 1983, eventually settling in Los Angeles.

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NARCISSUS FLOWER

My beloved has a Narcissus flower in her mouth,
Her souvenir from the prisons of Iran.

I know that nightly
From behind bars
One can see the trace of flowers
On the face of the moon

And mornings
Hear the flapping wings
Of migrating cranes In the blue sky.

I know that beneath eyelids
And clenched fists
And the gunless silence
Between two executions
And the stark white of final letters
And the meaning of single taps on walls
And the dewy folds of sorrow
And the stripped down glimpses of bliss
And the hollow sockets of pain
And the dimbrightness of hope
And the cloud-clad pinnacles of pride,
One can,
Yes, one can
Hide away spring.

And yet, I am awed
At how in dark captivity
One can raise
A Narcissus flower
Whose purity
Has not been stained
By blood.