From Teheran With Love Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

From Teheran with Love.

Side by side the beaus stood, hooded and
silent, they no longer heard charivari chants as
prayers on pale, shivering lips abruptly ended.

They had been warned, their love was banned
by the law of the land and by straight people’s
norm, and now forsaken even by their families.

They had tried to conform, but their bond was
too strong. Two Iranian men twist in the wind,
will their mothers, when alone, pray for them?