Inspiration: Poems

I had a strange dream, Irina Ratushinskaya

I had a strange dream last night:
I was to be shot at dawn.
I was imprisoned in a concrete basement
From which the dawn was not visible.
And then one of my classmates appeared,
We used to sit together at the same desk,
Copying out exercises from each other
And throwing a paper dart
(For some reason it wouldn't fly).
My classmate said: 'Good evening.
How unlucky you've been.  I'm very sorry.
I mean, being shot - it's so inhumane.
I've always believed in soft measure.
But somehow no one asked me,
They just gave me a pistol and sent me.
I'm not here alone, you know, my family's here,
I've got a wife and kids - a son and daughter.
Look, I can show you their photographs.
My daughter's like me, don't you think?
You see, I've got an old mother.
I mustn't put her health at risk.
The council gave us a new flat recently,
It's got a pink-tiled bathroom.
And my wife wants a washing machine.
I mean, I can't.....Anyway, it's no good....
There's nothing we can do to change things.
I've a pass to go to Crimea, to a sanatorium.
They'll shoot you at dawn, all the same.
If they hadn't sent me, it'd have been another.
Perhaps somebody you didn't know.
And after all, we did go to school together.
And throw paper darts together.
You've just no idea how bad
It makes me feel, but what can you do? 

I will live and survive, Irina Ratushinskaya

I will live and survive and be asked:
How they slammed my head against a trestle,
How I had to freeze at nights,
How my hair started to turn grey...
But I'll smile.  And will crack some joke
And brush away the encroaching shadow.
And I will render homage to the dry September
That became my second birth.
And I'll be asked: 'Doesn't' it hurt you to remember?'
Not being deceived by my outward flippancy.
But the former names will detonate my memory -
Magnificent as old cannon.
And I will tell of the best people in all the earth,
The most tender, but also the most invincible,
How they waited for letters from their loved ones.
And I'll be asked: what helped us to live
When there was neither letters nor any news - only walls,
And the cold of the cell, and the blather of official lies,
And the sickening promises made in exchange for betrayal.
And I will tell of the first beauty
I saw in captivity.
A frost-covered window! No spyholes, nor walls,
And the cold of the cell, and the blather of official lies,
And the sickening promises made in exchange for betrayal.
And I will tell of the first beauty
I saw in captivity.
A frost-covered window! No spy holes, nor walls,
Nor cell-bars, nor the long endured pain -
Only a blue radiance on a tiny pane of glass,
A cast pattern- none more beautiful could be dreamt!
The more clearly you looked the more powerfully blossomed
Those brigand forest, campfire and birds!
And how many times there was bitter cold weather
And how many windows sparkled after that one -
But never was it repeated,
That heavily upheaval of rainbow ice!
And anyway, what good would it be to me now,
And what would be the pretext fro the festival?
Such a gift can only be received once,
And perhaps, it is only needed once.

(from Freedom: Human Rights Education Pack, Caroline Adams, Marietta Harrow and Dan Jones Amnesty International UK Hodder and Stoughton, Hodder and Stoughton 2001)

About Irina Ratushinhskaya

Irina Ratushinskaya, the Ukrainian poet and dissident, was sentenced to 7 years jail in Mordovia in 1983 for anti Soviet agitation and propaganda. In prison, she wrote poetry in miniscule script on cigarette papers or bars of soap which she later dissolved in water after memorising the verses.
 
In prison she sewed protective workmen's gloves. Once she persuaded the prison guards to give her coloured cottons some sacking and needles  'to improve her sewing skills'. Across the top of the cloth she embroidered 33 different flowers. Below them she embroidered different arrangements of the same flowers in a series of rows across the cloth. She sent the cloth to a fellow women political prisoner who immediately realised that the flowers on the top were the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet and that the embroidery below was a poem.

Friendly soldiers carried these across Russia and some were dropped over the wall into the British Embassy in Moscow later to be published in her book Grey is the Colour of Hope.

The Doves

outside doves perch everywhere
it is clear from
their cooings of love and delight
it is clear from the whirr of their wings
wings which seem to fan me in my prisoner's sleep
it is clear outside
doves perch everywhere

the night is like a day on the other side of the bars
on this side the day is like the night

(from Voices of Conscience: Poetry of Oppression, edited by Hume Cronyn, Richard Mc Kane, Stephen Watts; Iron Press 1995)

About Reza Baraheni

Reza Baraheni was imprisoned in Iran in 1973, where he was tortured. He has written about these experiences in his book God's Shadow. Although fired from the University of Tehran for his advocacy of equal rights for Iranian women, he continued to teach creative writing in friends' homes and in the basement of his own apartment. He is recognised as a major inspiration to Iranian writers.

End of A Discussion with a Jailer

From the window of my small cell
I can see trees smiling at me,
Roofs filled with my people,
Windows weeping and praying for me.
From the window of my small cell
I can see your large cell.

(from Voices of Conscience: Poetry of Oppression, edited by Hume Cronyn, Richard Mc Kane, Stephen Watts; Iron Press 1995)

About Samih Al-Qasim

Samih Al Qasim, was born in 1939 and is a Palestinian. He was imprisoned many times for his political actions in Palestine. He is a prolific poet and has said 'the only way I can assert my identity is by writing poetry'.

Touch, Hugh Lewin

When I get out
I'm going to ask someone
to touch me
very gently please
and slowly,
touch me
I want
to learn again
how life feels.

I've not been touched
for seven years
for seven years
I've been untouched
out of touch
and I've learnt
to know now
the meaning of
untouchable.

Untouched- not quite
I can count the things
that have touched me

One: fists
At the beginning
fierce mad fists
beating beating

till I remember
screaming
don't touch me
please don't touch me

Two:paws
The first four years of paws
every day
patting paws, searching
-arms up, shoes off
legs apart-

prodding paws,systematic
heavy, indifferent
probing away
all privacy.

I don't want fists and paws
I want
to want to be touched
again
and to touch
I want to feel alive
again
I want to say
when I get out
Here I am
please touch me.

(from Freedom: Human Rights Education Pack, Caroline Adams, Marietta Harrow and Dan Jones Amnesty International UK Hodder and Stoughton, 2001)

About Hugh Lewin

In 1964, the security police in Johannesburg detained Hugh Lewin, a member of the Liberal Party and the African Resistance Movement, which both opposed the apartheid system in South Africa. He was later tried and convicted on the charges of sabotage.  He spent seven years in prison, secretly recording his experiences, and those of his fellow inmates, on the pages of his Bible. On release, rather than submit to 24-hour arrest, he left South Africa on a one-way visa.

Hamra (Red) Night

A candle in a long street
A candle in the sleep of houses
A candle for frightened shops
A candle for bakeries
A candle for a journalist trembling in an empty office
A candle for a fighter
A candle for a woman doctor over patients
A candle for the wounded
A candle for plain talk

A candle for the stairs
A candle for a hotel packed with refugees
A candle for a singer
A candle for broadcasters in their hideouts
A candle for a bottle of water
A candle for the air
A candle for two lovers in a naked flat
A candle for the falling sky
A candle for the beginning
A candle for the ending
A candle for the last communiqué

A candle for conscience
A candle in my hands. 

About Saddi Youssef
Saadi Youssef was born near Basra in Iraq in 1934.  His writing has been heavily sensored and he spent time as a political prisoner.  Twice exiled from Iraq, he has spent most of his life living outside his country of birth.