1. The sun is my bread, the soil is silk
And the night is feminine, the fields a bed

2. Dreams are a fleet sailing in the dew
Behind the dawn, no envoy returns

3. Peace is a splendid face in the streets
Yet inside me all wars spin

4. Hunger sprouts in the cracks of my instincts
I silence its roar when it stirs

5. Frost creeps, fencing off my veins,
My homeland, and fire creeps in my veins

6. Death steals a tear each day
That even mourning the poor is plentiful

7. O you whose eyes I fight my defeats
Two years have passed, the sail torn

8. Two years of motionless wings,
No land to alight, no sky to fly

9. Two years, I slaughter the chick of my throat
So the captive awakens - but no captive stirs

10. Even the caravans returned without a vial
Containing noble light seeds

11. What then shall I sow in the land of my blood
No wheat in my palms but your light

12. For I belong to the taste of your rejecting palms
And I, with my banner, am yours to command

13. Stand at the edge of innocence, a cloud
While I stand bleeding, captive

14. I shape you from my ashes into a planet
A homeland for all the weary

15. O last of bullets, do not surrender
Perhaps iron will gain a conscience

16. Or Ferdowsi will filter them
And portray them to the bloated

17. Nations sold and purchased on the sidewalk
Palaces built with blood money

18. And perhaps motherhood will become estrangement
And the estrangement lifted by the sparrow's wings

19. Yet something will ask: Who am I?
So I will spin, and spin, and spin

20. And say to the thing inside me
Who are you, my homeland? Fragrance arises