Neda's Voice Poem by gershon hepner

Barbarians who murdered Neda
are standing by the lethal letter
of Islamic law in Teheran,
where ayatollahs choose to ban
the freedom of expression that
now spurs a proletariat
that will not let itself be hushed,
and trampled and betrayed and crushed.

Believers here have not endorsed
deniers of the Holocaust
whose deadly lack of inhibition
has brought them close to nuclear fission
and brings to virgins’ faces pallor,
afraid of devotees of Allah
with whom they never wished to be
united, hoping to be free.

Nega has provided them
a martyr, and they now condemn
the ancien régime and say
she died for them, which is why they
must rise together taking arms
against the bigoted imams,
behaving as Persian Jews
behaved when they mixed blood with booze.

Inspired by the death of Neda Agha Soltan, who was murdered on June 18,2009 in Teheran, an innocent bystander in a demonstration gainst the regime in Iran. Roger Cohen writes in the NYT, June 23,2009:
They gathered, the women in black, at Nilofar Square to mourn Neda Agha Soltan, the Iranian student cut down by a single bullet, whose last moments were captured on a video that has gone global. I sat among the mourners in late afternoon, under the plane trees, as candles burned and a prayer was said. The square seemed an oasis. I asked a young woman if she was scared. “Yes, ” she said. “I’m scared that all the blood shed for this cause may be wasted.” The cause, of course, is the annulment of Iran’s fraudulent election and, beyond that, freedom. The freedom not to live in a state that slams shut the doors of the mosque next to Nilofar Square because Neda, as a protester, was denied a proper service.


6/23/09