[Editor’s Note: As fresh as this morning’s headlines: Our resident global poetess, Dr. Janet Hoult of Sunset Park, retrieves her earlier ties with Iran, and she makes a direct family connection with the martyred young woman Neda Agha-Soltan of Tehran, whom the world is mourning.
[In 1953, Dr. Hoult graduated from high school in Iran where her father was a foreign service officer. A member of a poetry group in Santa Monica, Dr. Hoult has a granddaughter named Neda. We present the first of her two tributes.]
Neda’s Gift
Neda means “Gift of God” in Farsi, or so we’ve been told
In Arabic, it’s “Morning Dew” promising a day of gold
Today we hear that Neda means “Voice” of people like us
Who dare to speak out against fraud, lies and injustice.
Their “voices” are stilled by violence, like
Neda in Tehran
Protesting election fraud, her blood spills on the ground,
Her life is lost at a great cost to more than family and friends
Leaders must now find other ways to make the protests end.
By shedding the people’s blood,
they’ve created a new urgency
Neda’s blood was not shed in vain,
but gives life to a growing insurgency.
Dr. Hoult may be contacted at HOULTight@aol.com
