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

You want to erase my being, but in this land I shall remain 
I will continue to dance as long as I sustain 
I speak as long as I’m living, fury, roar, and revolt 
your stones and rocks I fear not, 
I’m flood, my flow you can’t halt 

- Simin Behbahani -

A poem by Simin Behbahani

Not one, not two ...they were five 

Not one, not two ...they were five and yet I don't know why 
In my mind, they were more like fifty. 
And, how is it possible that gallows [on which they were hanged] 
Were, someday, trees that did not surrender to axes? 

Tell me how to write about the treehood days of the gallows: 
Standing firm for freedom, they dug their heels in the meadow. 
When the breeze found them in the orchard and wrapped itself 
around their branches 
Their message reached everyone in soft playful dances. 

Now, heads have grown on them, heads hanging 
from broken necks, 
Heads of full-bodied figures, perhaps champions 
in their own way. 
Left waiting, feet-dangling-in-the-air, utterly 
robbed of their words, 
These heads whose stories could have filled many books! 
Only clouds could now rain tears on their broken bodies, 
For mothers were not united with them even after their death. 

Don't waste a complaint on the faithless judge, who 
Was the enemy, not of darkness and tyranny, 
but of the Giver of life. 

- Simin Behbahani - 

translated by Fatemeh Keshavarz 

A poem by Simin Behbahani: "Not one, not two ...they were five" 
© Payvand Iran News

Simin Behbahani Presente !!!!!

June 20, 1927 - August 19, 2014 

One of the most prominent figures of modern Persian literature and one of the most outstanding amongst the contemporary Persian poets. 

Simin Behbahani was Iran's national poet. 

♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥

 Iranian poet and women's rights advocate Simin Behbahani dies 
 © The Guardian 
Poet Behbahani, 'lioness of Iran', dies at 87 - state media 
© Reuters
Famed Iranian Poet Simin Behbahani Dies At 87
© Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Remembering poet Simin Behbahani, the 'Lioness of Iran'
© The Washington Post

Simin Behbahani 
© Persian Language & Literature

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.

- Simin Behbahani -

Gracefully she approached

Gracefully she approached,
in a dress of bright blue silk;
With an olive branch in her hand,
and many tales of sorrows in her eyes.
Running to her, I greeted her,
and took her hand in mine:
Pulses could still be felt in her veins;
warm was still her body with life.

"But you are dead, mother", I said;
"Oh, many years ago you died!"
Neither of embalmment she smelled,
Nor in a shroud was she wrapped.

I gave a glance at the olive branch;
she held it out to me,
And said with a smile,
"It is the sign of peace; take it."

I took it from her and said,
"Yes, it is the sign of...", when
My voice and peace were broken
by the violent arrival of a horseman.
He carried a dagger under his tunic
with which he shaped the olive branch
Into a rod and looking at it
he said to himself:
"Not too bad a cane
for punishing the sinners!"
A real image of a hellish pain!
Then, to hide the rod,
He opened his saddlebag.
in there, O God!
I saw a dead dove, with a string tied
round its broken neck.

My mother walked away with anger and sorrow;
my eyes followed her;
Like the mourners she wore
a dress of black silk.

- Simin Behbahani –

A Poet Who 'Never Sold Her Pen or Soul' an article from The Washington Post, 2006

To stay alive, you must slay silence ....
to pay homage to being, you must sing.

- Simin Behbahani -