My Country, I Will Build You Again by Simin Behbahani

My Country, I Will Build You Again
© Poetry in Voice


My country, I will build you again,
if need be, with bricks made from my life.
I will build columns to support your roof,
if need be, with my bones.
I will inhale again the perfume of flowers
favored by your youth.
I will wash again the blood off your body
with torrents of my tears.
Once more, the darkness will leave this house.
I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky.
The resurrector of “old bones” will grant me in his bounty
a mountain’s splendor in his testing grounds.
Old I may be, but given the chance, I will learn.
I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny.
I will recite the Hadith of “love and country”
with such fervor as to make each word bear life.
There still burns a fire in my breast
to keep undiminished the warmth of kinship
I feel for my people.

Once more you will grant me strength,
though my poems have settled in blood.

Once more I will build you with my life,
though it be beyond my means.

- Simin Behbahani -

July 20,1927 – August 19, 2014

Iranian Poet & Activist


Iranian Influential Women Simin Behbahani
© IranWire