A Rose Snaps

A fragment

 

                                                for Neda Agha-Soltan

 

 

Many ways to slay a rose

By blade, by dark, by fire,

To every death its shame

To every death its ire.

 

A Spring transfixed

The only ever given,

The stabbing instant when

Light was forever riven.

 

A cloud was wounded

With all her worthless brightness,

A cirrus now distills

In drops of dark her whiteness.

 

A voice was choked and

Hurled along blood’s trail,

Deluded and distorted memory

Of what refuses to be clay.

 

The sail that flew across

The breezes can’t be lifted,

The wings’ blue balance

Has been forever tilted.

 

The ocean’s breath was chilled

Heaved the wind in chains,

Of water’s foamy mouth

A marble wave remains.