{"id":23157,"date":"2012-11-19T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=23157"},"modified":"2012-11-19T01:37:56","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T01:37:56","slug":"they-are-hearing-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/11\/they-are-hearing-us\/","title":{"rendered":"They Are Hearing Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the people of Iran who live under Internet and telephone censorship.<\/em><\/p>\n

Day before yesterday
\nwhen Zeenat called
\nsaid the website is censored, they are watching,
\nher hushed voice quivered.<\/p>\n

I know if we spoke again,
\nthick copper wires
\nmapped below her house
\nmeshed under the pavements
\nwill hear us again,
\ntheir plastic shells
\nwould begin to echo
\nto the men who hook them under streets,
\nthey will laugh as she will bleed
\nlike copper wires make you do.<\/p>\n

My swollen finger tips with sore skin
\nonce crawled on my desk to reach balm
\nwhen I first pulled copper wires
\non my rosewood guitar,
\nwires echo and make you bleed.<\/p>\n

I fear those men, with rims of copper wire
\nenough to strangle a country
\nwould send her voice
\nto radio and TV;
\nthose men, will pull Zeenat
\nfrom the ropes of her black hair
\nwrapped around their fists
\ndrag her from her chair,
\nfor speaking to a tall foreign man
\non wires of nation and religion.<\/p>\n

In her land where freedom is more
\nand voices are heard every day,
\nZeenat and her friends
\nare being heard
\nby men who don’t cry
\nbut laugh when others do.<\/p>\n

Last time we met
\nI gave Zeenat scissors to cut hair
\nshe refused,
\nI gave cotton plugs for ears
\nshe took.<\/p>\n

As wires turn warm
\nand websites censored,
\nwe may never speak again;
\nshe lives in Iran.
\n_____________________<\/p>\n

Sumeet Grover:<\/em>
\n– Member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a> and of the TRANSCEND Art & Peace Network<\/a><\/em>
\n– Coordinator of Global Poetry<\/a><\/em>
\n– A software engineer originally from India, based in the UK.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the people of Iran who live under Internet and telephone censorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}