Gedicht
Ali Alizadeh
Writer in Prison
Writer in Prison
Writer in Prison
Your cell is a cavern; the guardsgrinding teeth outside your grotto
marginally refined ape-men; you
the last human in the world
of triumphant beasts. Is your pen
the key to emancipation?
No. The lock has no keyhole
and welded beyond breakage,
bolstered by all the energy
invested in orchestrating
your captivity. Such formality
staged for the incarceration
of one soul. The vilification,
the public outrage, the trial
and the theatrical castigation
all to ensure that the curtain
forever falls over your life. What
could a pen possibly do
to alter the absolute plot
of the script of so-called justice?
Zilch. Your freedom is untenable.
Barbarity always possesses
the upper hand. Don’t waste
your vital ink doodling tears.
In your pre- or post-historic cave
you are the insider archaeologist.
Your pen is a shovel, chisel
and brush only for exhuming
the bruised icons, recovering the abject
tales and treasures from beneath
the stone, lava, rubble and sand
of the storms of tyranny. Please
don’t get sentimental now.
You, writer in prison,
may yet be our saviour.
© 2006, Ali Alizadeh
From: Eyes in Times of War
Publisher: Salt Publishing, Cambridge, UK
From: Eyes in Times of War
Publisher: Salt Publishing, Cambridge, UK
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Writer in Prison
Your cell is a cavern; the guardsgrinding teeth outside your grotto
marginally refined ape-men; you
the last human in the world
of triumphant beasts. Is your pen
the key to emancipation?
No. The lock has no keyhole
and welded beyond breakage,
bolstered by all the energy
invested in orchestrating
your captivity. Such formality
staged for the incarceration
of one soul. The vilification,
the public outrage, the trial
and the theatrical castigation
all to ensure that the curtain
forever falls over your life. What
could a pen possibly do
to alter the absolute plot
of the script of so-called justice?
Zilch. Your freedom is untenable.
Barbarity always possesses
the upper hand. Don’t waste
your vital ink doodling tears.
In your pre- or post-historic cave
you are the insider archaeologist.
Your pen is a shovel, chisel
and brush only for exhuming
the bruised icons, recovering the abject
tales and treasures from beneath
the stone, lava, rubble and sand
of the storms of tyranny. Please
don’t get sentimental now.
You, writer in prison,
may yet be our saviour.
From: Eyes in Times of War
Writer in Prison
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