 |
| Tweet by Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad 9/16/22 |
Dark clouds covered the sky
for months before the year
Troy fell prey to a wooden horse.
Scientists now tell
nothing had been growing
for years before chieftains
took their tribes
in search of better pastures,
warring one another for the right
to greener valleys.
Homer decries
the face of a beautiful woman
for the first war,
but tree stumps
tell of darkness, drought;
the bowels of the earth tell
of roaming hordes
drifting, losing their roots.
The underworld
brings back abandoned hearths,
jars still full of honey, tools,
cradles, toys,
weapons
buried where a fighter fell.
The scientists can’t yet tell
what covered the sun, what
drove the peaceful herdsman
to take up arms and leave
the simple habits
of his pasture,
but back there, where ancient empires
used to thrive, five thousand years on
and, still, a woman’s face,
even when veiled,
is blamed. Is doomed.
Ana Doina, Romanian-born American writer living in New Jersey, left Romania during the Ceausescu regime. Her poems appeared in numerous print and online magazines, anthologies, and textbooks. She won Honorable Mention in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience contest in 2007, and three of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2002, 2003, and 2004.