Special Feature: Socio-Political Poems Selected for International Women's Day

My Dear Readers:

In times of economic hardship, sociopolitical turmoil, and armed conflicts, this International Women’s Day is a time to acknowledge the courage, intellect and grit of extraordinary women in key roles in every aspect of our society,  I would like to  share the haiku and tanka selected below to encourage each of you to take time to rethink the meaning behind women's day and its significance:

Selected Poems

New Life

cellar shelter

her newborn suckles

in sleep 

smoke-filled sky

beyond the cellar window ...

look on her baby's face

another 

night of artillery fire

her breastmilk runs dry

Chen-ou Liu

one child

sits alone weeping

for a mother

the falling bombs

will kill twice

Giddy Nielsen-Sweep

street corner

unkempt panhandler shows me

her Purple Heart

John J. Dunphy

a police phalanx

moves backward

a black woman

Jack Galmitz

a red handprint

across the young woman's  mouth ...

she stands alone

on scattered maple leaves

in the divorce court's shadow

Chen-ou Liu 

 

stacked stones

the steps I must climb

to my goddess self

Jackie Chou

My Country,

I will build you again,

If need be,

with bricks

made from my life

Found Tanka by Simin Behbahani, Iran's national poet known as “the lioness of Iran"

To my female readers/poets:

Wishing you a day filled with all the strength, power and courage that makes you the amazing woman you are

Chen-ou

Note: In a 2011 video message to the Iranian people in celebration of the Persian New Year, President Obama said Ms. Behbahani’s “words have moved the world” and quoted a poem she wrote in 1982.

On this day – a celebration that serves as a bridge from the past to the future – I would like to close with a quote from the poet Simin Behbahani – a woman who has been banned from traveling beyond Iran, even though her words have moved the world: "Old I may be, but, given the chance, I will learn. I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny. I will recite the Hadith of love of country with such fervor as to make each word bear life.   ~ President Obama, Nowruz Message

Below is the full text of  Simin Behbahani's 1982 poem:

My Country, I Will Build You Again

My country, I will build you again,

If need be, with bricks made from my life.

I will build columns to support your roof,

If need be, with my bones.

I will inhale again the perfume of flowers

Favored by your youth.

I will wash again the blood off your body

With torrents of my tears.

Once more, the darkness will leave this house.

I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky.

The resurrector of “old bones” will grant me in his bounty

a mountains splendor in his testing grounds.

Old I may be, but given the chance, I will learn.

I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny.

I will recite the Hadith of love and country

With such fervor as to make each word bear life.

There still burns a fire in my breast

to keep undiminished the warmth of kinship

I feel for my people.

Once more you will grant me strength,

though my poems have settled in blood.

Once more I will build you with my life,

though it be beyond my means.