The Dictator’s Message

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

 

A dictator tries to call back his people over the graves of their loved ones

Bibliographical info

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.

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