What Have You Done to Me?

– In memory of Ali Dashti – Homeland! What a word! For a nightingale whose throat the thorns have pierced! What a word! For a bud whose tender stems the sickles have cut! Tell me what homeland has been for our lone apple tree? Amid the plunder of a thousand hands, from within the chambers? What a word! How full of secrets! How full of pain! All its memories strike me with their fists. Homeland! Homeland! My sullen stranger! What became of your loving gaze? Tell your poisoned arrows: lodged between my two eyes what became of my loving gaze?...