Dedicated to Mahvash Sabet, Imprisoned Iranian Teacher & poet

Mahvash Sabet is an Iranian teacher & poet, serving a 20 year sentence in Iran .

English Pen says,

Teacher and poet Mahvash Sabet is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Evin prison, Tehran. She is one of a group of seven Baha’i leaders known as the “Yaran-i-Iran” – “Friends of Iran” – who have been detained since 2008 for their faith and activities related to running the affairs of the Bahá’í community in Iran. Mahvash Sabet began writing poetry in prison, and a collection of her prison poems was published in English translation on 1 April 2013. PEN International is calling on the Iranian authorities to release Mahvash Sabet and all other writers imprisoned in Iran solely for exercising their right to legitimate freedom of expression. - 



 
After reading her poetry, I cannot help but write the following

across that prison wall

her words call to me,

but how could I,

in this free world,

relate to what she goes through daily,

I walk the green parks,

enjoying the trees in their finery,

I hear the birds sing,

I see the butterflies flittering by,

I pick up the golden leaves in autumn,

and watch the spring buds bloom,

I, the free woman,

She stares at iron bars,

“Trapped in distress,

caught in this bad dream,”

without hearing my voice,

without seeing me read her words,

thousands of miles away,

I listen to music drifting

across the room while I cook

a meal for my little girl,

She sees the suffering of women

their cries of pain,

bound in their cage,

and crashing through the notes

of Tchaikovsky,

I feel her agony,

through her words, through her words

And I am no longer free,

I am bound in chains,

linked to her words

and through those words, to her pain.

 

But one day,

we will recite those words

in different parks,

amidst the spring blossoms

and be linked

through those words, in freedom.


Prison Poems by Mahvash Sabet