On the street, when summer was kindly green
The white doves flew over us and offered peace.
The sweet lyrics of summer called for lavish meadows.
Then, you and I took a stroll. You looked like a star at dawn
as if you had squeezed darkness in your fist.

Let me confide in you:
most people are dying in their own particular way,
birds’ wings have been clipped together,
the ghosts of cockroaches are following us,
old ladies have wept all their tears and prayed all their prayers.
The blinded eyes can’t see the fading color of the earth.
Tyrants rule, fools bow, and graves of innocents have become
a sight-seeing attraction.
Sobbing children play with bones
and dogs live no more,
forests are images in storybooks.

We were crestfallen!
Then we saw a basket of blue lights
hanging from the eyes of the moon
and we tasted the moonlight.
We slept in indulgence
and woke up in vigilance.
No more nightmares on the truth of the day.
At that moment the sun came up
and brought us a bouquet of pure light.

Fereshteh Sholevar, the Iranian born poet and writer, immigrated to Germany and later to USA in 1978. She received her Master’s degree in Creative writing at the University of Iowa and Rosemont College, Pa.  She writes in four languages and has authored 6 books of poetry (two of which are bilingual: English-German and English-Spanish), a novel, and a children’s book. She won two awards from Philadelphia Poets, Pa Poetry Society second prize in 2004, and three awards in 2019. Her new bilingual poetry book (English-French) is available on Amazon: Of Dust And Chocolate.