The second death

January 16, 2006
iranian.com

Since the resurgence of fundamentalism in the Muslim world, many women have been stoned to death for committing adultery. This is the story of one woman who survived the stoning. However, the executioner decided that she should be buried alive, since she had committed a mortal sin and God obviously wanted her to suffer even more.

The abrupt closure of the heavy door
Smothers the last of the wounded breaths

The faded dark space of the shivering chamber
Rushes to grasp the last of the fainted air

The troubled light hesitates, bends in disgust
And refuses to enter the horrified coffin

I remembered, I remembered
The uncanny moments of the early bondage

The blazing bullets of the tarnished gossip
The assault of the ancient, morbid commandments

And the trivial ethics, waiting anxiously
To consume yet another soul

I remembered the men of God
The black caped women of terror
The mumbling judges
The hysterical sisters of chastity

Counting their stones one by one
As though they were hoping, hoping

That more stones
More throws

Would offset their sins at the time of Resurrection
At the dawn of the Last Judgment

I remembered, I remembered
The maddening crowd, circling around the boisterous fraud

Humbling, targeting and shouting aloud
Cursing the lust, pondering the sight

I shovel my fears away, to my back
Beside my wounded tied up hands

To grab life, to blast death
To see the sun, to feel the earth
I close my eyes, I hear my tears
I sing my pains, I cast my joys

I remembered, I remembered
I was stoned to death

I was stoned to death
Because

Only because, like a generous tree
I spread my roots, my desires

Across onto the soil of an ancient land
Bruised with decadent ideals of rotted centuries

I was condemned to death, because
They did not grasp the essence of loving hearts

The meaning of a frenzied gaze of a handsome lover
In whose freshly scented naked body

The excited birds of unruly love
Forgot to sing their lasting songs

And in the volcanic thrust of the silent lips
The joyful lusts escaped the lonely corners of agony

And the dream of making love to his robust flesh
Cracks open the omen of all the lonely beds

The darkness falls, exhausted, ashamed
Tries to cover, to solace the air

There is no wind to carry the lover’s hair
No poem to dance on lustful lips of a lover’s dream

No songs to sing
No muffles to scream

No melodies to play
No pleasures to taste

All that is left, is the mustered pain
The fainted echoes of vanished shouts

And the hardened touch of Godly revenge
Scorning, battering and cursing the light

The abrupt closure of the heavy door
Smothers the last of the wounded breaths

And I am left, spinning in the darkness
To witness my own second death

-- Massi, 2004