My homeland!
My merciful homeland!
Now, which one of your fingers
do you count on?
with which hand?
Do you hear my words?
With which ear?
What happened?
What happened to your
tulip-like ears?
And what happened that your youth
fell from pavements into gutters?
And fall they did such that
Learn humility if you seek blessings*
And your tulips are blessed every day
They vomit blood in all the colourful cars
Tulips have bloomed from
the blood of the youths of our land**
And your anthems all
mourn on special days
kids who are lost in their shoes
from one alley to the next
and the dream of a bicycle is lost
in Vali Asr Street***
so that, no!
Walking in jeans that have
sixty percent discount up their legs
My homeland!
The coffins of your youths
thus drown
on the shoulders of pavements

*Line attributed to Pourya-ye Vali (d. 1322 CE) wrestling champion, Sufi teacher, and poet.

**Line from a poem by Aref Qazvini https://poetryinvoice.ca/read/poems/tulips-bloom-youths-blood.

***Street in Tehran named after the twelfth occulted Shiite Imam, Mahdi. “Vali Asr” literally translates to “Guardian of the Times” and is an epithet for Mahdi.