Light Through a Magnifying Glass
S. Rouzbeh
۲۷ خرداد ۱۴۰۵

Scattered rays become powerful when brought together: a poem about remembrance, solidarity and the gathering of light.

‘Light Through a Magnifying Glass’

What an age this is,
when night
is no longer merely night;
it is a black mouth
swallowing the names of the young
and with its cold teeth
leaving an absence
on mothers’ shoulders.

The girls,
with hair that smelled of fire,
passed through the alley,
and the boys
with shirts that still
believed in the colour of dawn.

But the bullet
was the language of darkness,
and darkness
was hungrier than ever.

They took the eyes,
but the gaze
spread among the people;
in the walls,
in the closed windows,
in hands
raising their children’s photographs
like
lamps.

Yes,
an eye can be blinded,
but seeing
does not begin in the eye;
sometimes
it begins in a wound,
sometimes
in a name shining on stone,
sometimes
in a mother
who weeps quietly,
whose weeping
in a thousand homes
becomes light.

In the heart of night
they fired the final shot,
but night
never
has the last sound.

For every name
that falls to the earth
becomes a root
in the street’s memory;
and every street
one day
with those same roots
will rise.

What do they want
from a human life?
From these wounded bodies,
from these weary breaths,
from these people
who still,
in the darkest hour,
remember the sun?

Does light not
triumph over darkness?

Yes,
but light,
when left alone,
only trembles on a wall;
like a candle
in a nameless room.

Light,
when scattered,
only announces itself,
but when
its rays meet,
it sets the black paper of night
on fire.

That is the secret;
not separate cries,
not solitary wounds,
not resentments
that draw us
away from one another.

Darkness
does not fear our numbers;
it fears our light becoming one.

We
are wandering rays
until
at a single point
we come together.

But if
at the heart of a magnifying glass
we gather,
if hands
around a single sun
join,
if voices
rise beneath an emblem
that sets the sun
upon a lion’s back,
then
light
is no longer a plea;
it is fire.

Some
still do not know
that losing the way
does not always come from the enemy;
sometimes
it comes from little wounds,
from silent grievances,
from staring
at our own shadow,
when
the sun
stands before us.

But freedom
is no one person’s name,
no one group’s road,
no single voice’s inheritance
alone.

Freedom
is the moment
when wounds,
instead of drawing apart,
look at one another
and understand
that all
have passed through the same night.

For that girl
whose eye they took,
but not her gaze;
for that boy
who fell,
but made the people
stand taller;
for the mothers
who still,
in picture frames,
with their children
speak softly;

we must save light
from loneliness.

We must
stand
around a single sun.

And one day
this very soil,
with a quiet voice,
but beyond turning back,
will say:

The night is over,
not because the darkness
had diminished;
because light
was no longer
scattered.

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-896f8b62-7ea9-323a-884f-b49e07600752
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