A Home Called Iran

S. Rouzbeh

This soil

is more than soil;

it is the wounded brow of a home

that fell so many times

and again

from among the dust

called out its own name.

Many are those

who lie in wait for it;

with a folded map

in the pocket of politics.

But Iran

is a name that still

on grandmothers' tongues

stays warm.

Here

is a home of many voices;

languages in which mothers

have sung their lullabies,

hands that have baked bread,

eyes that have wept over their dead,

and footsteps

that still

have not lost the way back to tomorrow.

In this long night

their names

like a hidden lamp

burn in the earth's breast;

those who left

and behind them

left a path to the light

open.

We have come

not for little flags,

not for all those cries of ‘long live’ and ‘death to’

that built nothing

but walls.

We have come

to open our hands

from the clenched fists of fear and hatred,

to lay bread on a table

with room for everyone,

and to remember:

a home raised on hatred

will bring its roof

down on those who built it.

Iran

is not the inheritance of a single lineage;

it holds in trust the wounds, the bread, the lullabies

and the lives

that in this soil

have taken root.

Whoever

holds this home dear

must, before any cry is raised,

take up a lamp,

lay a brick upon the earth,

and carry their own share

of this land's burden

on their shoulders.