From One, a Multitude
S. Rouzbeh
۲۵ بهمن ۱۴۰۴

The attempt to erase one life gives rise to a multitude that cannot be contained by numbers.

Title: Poem

‘From One, a Multitude’

One

fell in silence.

No cry,

no name

to be engraved on a stone.

Only a number

drawn with a black line

upon a wall.

They imagined

it was all over,

that ‘one’ had been subtracted

and the multitude had grown quiet.

But the wall

knew arithmetic.

From the crack in that very line

shadows grew;

two columns,

three columns,

and then

a crowd that could no longer

fit inside a number.

Within the borders of this very land

each fall

became a step

for another to rise.

One fell,

but the earth

multiplied them.

And now,

along that same crossed-out ‘one’,

we stand;

nameless,

faceless,

but countless.

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-e7479b95-d3b2-dcc8-f419-8ea28be47762
Please credit the author and link to this edition.