My father

 

Worlds of the unspoken

Worlds of the unfelt

Your face a mask

Of bony force

Of stone-like craving

Expressing what your eyes don't betray

A life that was nearly lived

And victories that were lived

To the full

Your hands are still

The claws of a lion

Stroking my hair as if I was just

A child

In a gesture that gives away nothing

Your only letter

That speaks of nothing but all

For which you never had words

Compressed in a few lines

With the sweetness of a desert flower

And the roughness of a singing plough

Like a smile in a petrol-stained face

And a car engine's chord in the hours

Between night and morning

Betraying the sailor's dream

Of the other shore deep

In the desert roads' sea

And beyond

Of the pearls of Oman

And the lands beyond the horizon

My father

Seneca's driver

Who refused to be

Seneca

Who remembered Jerusalem's road map by heart

As he steered his car accross half

The known world

And breathed his soul

Into it

My father

With the victor's smile

Washed away now by illness

And by the bitterness

Of old age

And by a life nearly lived

And a struggle

Nearly won

And perhaps lost

A struggle and a life

Of which you know

Nothing

My father

Who feared tenderness

Who loved crudely and unquestioningly

Who was loyal even in betrayal

And yet would never admit

To devotion

My father who loved

Every child on this earth

And has never seen

My daughter

My father

Of whom every woman on this earth

Has despared

And in her heart yet

Would never have left him

My father

My childhood

And the pain of my ageing

A world forever lost

Though still existing

Whose life is my challenge

My father

Salah-ad-Din's guard

Who I adored with the love of a child

As only children can do

My father,

I'm neither Seneca nor Salah-ad-Din

And my life is hard

And I fear tenderness just the way you do

My father

The shaikh of silence

Who governs a wadi of memories

Surrounded by stones

That cover

A submerged well

My father,

I wish I had a way to tell you...

I wish I had a way to be a child

Once again

I called you

At the emergency ward

Your voice loses hold in this world

And fades away in the distance

Stroke my hair as you used to do

Never mind distance and time

My father,

I close my eyes

My heart breaks

As you respond my call

And I fell your voice caress my heart

Saying:

My son...