Oh, beautiful, beautiful,
this time, we will pack a box of soil
from home and run. Not to school today,
love. The grandmother of Narges
had a terrible dream. She caught a firefly
in her palms and in the brief blunt dark that followed,
saw the land prepared with rows of tiny graves.
Would you believe me if I said there were
no lonely people on balconies before the war
on the war? Everyone we meet says they
no longer know who they were before.
Not to school today, love, let us go to the sea
instead. Let me comb your hair out with ribbons.
We live so close to the body it’s hard to tell
who is betraying who. Whether these revolutionary
guards are rebelling against the emperor
or last night’s blood moon, who came
with a peaceful heart but now lies bleeding
in a tent. It is a mistake to think of nature
as indifferent. I hold my ear to the ground
and it is all orchestra and ventricle—
shuffle-wing, swarm, hidden song, siren. A mother
finds a footprint of her dead child in the garden
and makes a shrine over it to keep the wind
from blowing it away. Oh, beautiful, beautiful,
these hands are incapable of building monuments.
MORE FROM THIS ISSUE
Tishani Doshi Is a writer and dancer. Her fifth collection of poems, Egrets, While War, is forthcoming internationally in 2026.
(This poem is part of Outlook 's March 21 issue Bombs Do Not Liberate Women which looks at the conflict in West Asia following US and Israel’s attacks on Iran leading to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the world wondered in loud silence, again, Whose War Is It Anyway?)
