I.

 

O flower sunk into the river

Little smiling jinni

The pearls in your hair

Catch the sun

In their garden

A radiant garden of light

And floating laughter

And joy

Rises

From your colourful heart

And from underneath

Your bare feet

Earth's voice rings:

Bithibini?

 

The bracelets on your ankles

Dance their assent and chant:

My sweet dark hennah earth

I love you with my beauty

My hands, my feet, my skin

In a thousand languages of love

I celebrate your seasons

In the cycles of my wandering

My foot prints carve on your warm face

Life's beautifying scars

With torn tender hands I rear you who rears me

And harvest the fruit of your humid womb

That bears, beyond time

The secret of my descend

 

                                             II

O sacred child of mountain and river

Where have you gone, how far?

What has happened to you?

My verse breaks

You are crying

Your grief alters my words

Love was a captive in merciless hands

And childhood a sacrifice to a stranger's crude eye

Earth bled under the piercing rough wind of our stark sigh

We fought for survival deep in the enemy's heart

Thirsty shadows from Allah's garden we all

Thrown against one another and yet

Still lovers, still nomads

Who follow destiny's star

 

                                  III

Desert I was and sound

Ocean I was and night

Paradise was an evening drawn

On Solomon's hour's bleeding orange red skies

I danced to the ardha

And my heart burnt with desire

The sun was a girl I loved

And I pursued her tracks' light path

The spear my hand threw

Stroke a deep wound

Into the scarred flesh of my spirit's dawn

Its blood mingling with yours resurrects earth's dark beauty

Migrating rain birds you and I

On our inward-striving flight