Reading the text of Richard Blanco's
poem, which he delivered in front of President Obama and assembled dignitaries (plus 20 million viewers at home) on Inauguration Day
last, I thought about how the same poetical description could be done
for Iran. There would be differences, of course, but many more
similarities. With apologies to Blanco, then, an only slightly
altered paean to oneness:
One Today
One sun rose on us today, kindled over
our shores,
peeking over the Alborz, greeting the
faces
of the Caspian and the Persian Gulf,
spreading a simple truth
across the Dasht-e-Kavir and the
Dasht-e-Lut, then charging over Mt. Damavand.
One light, waking up rooftop sleepers,
each one a story
told by our silent gestures moving to
begin the day.
My face, your face, millions of faces
in morning's mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing
into our day:
saffron-yellow piles of rice, the
rhythm of taxi horns,
fruit stands: melon, lemons and
pomegranites arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. Silver trucks
heavy with oil or paper --
bricks or yoghurt, teeming over
highways alongside us,
on our way to serve tea, paint
miniatures, or treat patients --
to teach poetry, or herd sheep as my
grandfather did
for twenty years, so I could write this
poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we
move through,
the same light on blackboards with
lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to
memorize, or atoms imagined
the "Persian culture" we keep
creating and recreating,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow
that won't explain
the sons lost in the war with Iraq,
whose faces stare at us
forever young at Behesht-e-Zahra
cemetery. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into intricately-woven
rugs,
life into the faces on tiled mosaics,
warmth
into the steps of our mosques and park
benches
as mothers watch children slide into
play.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to
every stalk
of rice, every head of wheat sown by
sweat
and hands, hands gleaning salt near Qom
or digging qanats
to carry water to villages and farms,
hands
building shops, taking power to country
towns, hands
as worn as my father's mixing and
molding mud bricks
so my brother and I could have books
and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities
and plains
mingled by one wind – our breath.
Breathe. Hear it
through the day's gorgeous din of
honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the
symphony
of footsteps, ouds, and screeching
trains,
the unexpected bol-bol on your clothes
line.
Hear: squeaky well-pulleys, traffic
police whistles,
or whispers across qaveh-khaneh tables,
Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying:
befarmaaid, salaam, qorbaan-e-shomaa,
or hosh geldin in the language my
mother taught me – in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break
from my lips.
One sky: since the Takht-e-Suleyman
and the Zagros claimed
their majesty, and the Zayandeh Rud and
the Karun Rud worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work
of our hands:
weaving reeds into baskets, finishing
one more kilim
for the customer on time, stitching
another sofreh
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a
piece of calligraphy,
or the last floor on the Milad Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our
resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift
our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at
the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks
for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising
a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a
father
who couldn't give what you wanted.
We head home: through the pall of smog
or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but
always – home,
always under one sky, our sky. And
always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every
rooptop
in every kucheh, of one country – all
of us --
facing the stars
hope – a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it – together.
