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
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.
