Wounded Streets

Sunday Post-Poem

The Water lilies
fields of narcissus
and the man who used to stand
on Windmill Street —
so that I
could raise a hand for him
in my poems —
all

are gone.

Fire burns in me.

Flames roar within me

I am full of wounded streets,
ruined gardens,
mangled bodies,
and girls who
in the last moments of life
sang love songs.

Seconds bombard me.

My romantic memory

is shelled a thousand times each day.

My loving memory
is wounded by shrapnel.

Bombs hit the streets of Shiraz.

mermaids

rise from the bloody and wounded sea in the Persian Gulf.

Hands reach out to me to say something.

A cry and the green spring fairy

- green springs

- green springs
and pigeons
that carried love letters to little girls.

How I wish
to wave the hand I no longer have
for the man on Windmill Street,
to hold him
in the embrace I no longer have,
and say: listen —
this is the sound of my heart —
pom-tak, pom-tak —

but the bombs,

no,
they do not let anyone hear
the sound of my heart,
a heart that beats
with the hearts of thousands of

young lovers

I let my imagination wander down Enghelab Street,
to collect the shattered pieces of my memories
and lay them in the basket of my broken life.

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