Miracle

Who builds a girls' school on a navy base? Who bombs that?

Photo by Babak Eshaghian on Unsplash

—With thanks to Timothy Green and Rattle Poetry, which published this poem for its Poets Respond series.

The people need to get their power back.
All of this anger is beside the point.
So what else can he do but mount the joints
Of the electric pole that’s still intact

this morning, three steel crossarms at the top, 
a crucifix in concrete. Around him loose
wires dangle in leaden clouds of ash and soot,
plus rain. He’s used to rain. His tennis shoes

seek pockets in the stone as he ascends;
a safety rope tied to his belt reminds him
of what’s below. Now everything depends
on him to generate what used to flow

everywhere, in lamps and laptops and rice cookers,
ventilators, freezers and thermostats,
water pumps, alarm clocks, fans and chargers,
email, cellphones and WhatsApp chats.

Around him oil and water mix with air:
Who builds a girls’ school on a navy base?
Who bombs that base when girls are playing there?
A black rain falls; he rubs it off his face.

Two things may be told but you will not detect
the truth between them, not when children die.
What he can do is try to fix what’s wrecked.
He feels the weight of tools against his thigh,

keeps climbing. How can one man push against 
such passion for destruction? All this debris  
should tempt him to surrender. It’s immense,
this apocalypse, this Gethsemane.

Yet he is capable of miracles —
running power lines, replacing circuits —
for electricity’s a magical
necessity, like hope. You can’t live without it.

Mothers search the rubble for their daughters.   
A husband texts his wife inside a van.
The balconies are dark. There is no laughter. 
In London, someone’s calling Isfahan. 

He stops. Up fifty feet or more, transfixed
against an orange sun, he leans 
and pulls a wire to his chest. What happens next
is anybody’s guess. Yours, and mine, and ours.

—Inspired by “Fear and Hope for Iranians Trapped Between Bombs and Defiant Rulers,” The New York Times, 3/9/2026, including photos by Arash Khamooshi.

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