The Dictator’s Message
O poets
return,
we have swept
your homeland clean
of thorns and splinters
O writers
return,
to make a record of your works
we have ordered paper from all over the world
O mothers
return,
we have made all the prisons
into schools and universities
O young people
return,
and for your country’s future
lay a new foundation
O painters
return,
and on war’s blood-soaked walls
paint the white dove of peace
O architects
return,
and for all these returnees
build their houses over corpses
of their dead, who stayed and struggled
Mina Assadi's "The Dictator's Message" translated by Dick Davis from The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women. Copyright © 2019 by Mage Publishers. Used with permission of Mage Publishers. All rights reserved.