The Women of My Motherland

In my motherland I am deemed criminal
for being woman. My laughter is crime
as is my voice in song. My touch forbidden
in case it tear the frail guise of morality.
My hair kept hidden away lest it become
a noose for my own neck.

The time has come to unravel
the tangled sorrows of our days.
Silence was never becoming of generations
robbed in the cradle, of light and shadow.
Hand-in-hand, our bodies sway in harmony
to an age-old freedom cry.

Do they not know that Iran is herself a woman?
Her abundant rivers may have dried
at the neglect of her captors, her vast skies shrouded
in decades of darkness. But she is Woman,
Eternal Mother, and her fearless children
have risen to her defense.

Louder and louder our wrath turns
in gyres around decaying talons wrapped
for decades around our throats.
Our blood flows a crimson red
down alleyways of broken childhoods
where liberty will soon grow