Over the shoulders of the sea’s blue expanse
stand two little girls.
One child kissed me and slept,
sad fields of papaya in the lap of meadows.
One child tormented me long, so long, and never slept.
I rose from her side, wounded,
aged by flames.
Fire was my exit.
Fire was the entrance gate for her
I rose from her side, wounded,
accompanied by harbours
and the darkest daisies, cloud-wound and thunder.
Weary, her braid kissed me,
entrusting me to the little birds.
Laila’s heart was tearful, She carried within her
the sorrow of vagrant birds,
a bird faced by rifles,
a bird bleeding and scarred.
Laila’s heart was tearful. I was a lover
chased forever by hounds of the tribe.
My love surged to her in waves, stringing death to life,
interlocking with the tremors of stars, the flights of meteors
and eruptions of the hearts.
I wanted to dissolve within her
To believe my vision, for space is reddened
by the blood of roses surprised by rifles,
by the hearts of the bird which kept its feathers
and did not sell its song at the auction.
Believe what the eyes of Gulf oysters says:
‘She whom I did not betray, within whose tumult my arms grow stronger,
will be neither the continuity nor conquest,
if all of you do not keep faith.’
Laila's heart was tearful: I was combining Tuful’s hair
as she called for her father, whom they had killed and buried
and wiped the tears of the innocent jasmine
as dry sand sough water
springing into grass in her lap.
Summer delivered its rain on the balcony of waiting
as Tuful called for her father, drawing a sun in the sand,
a palm tree,
and a single arrow, pointing towards a fifth direction.
Her mother realized her little bird’s wound would be
saddled like a daring horse, to carry her from the
defeated age of fear
across all the bridges, wholeheartedly.
Within it the ripe winds of presence struck root,
all the wounds wore its scars.
The roads shed oils to turn coat-threads
into candles and flames.
So be rested now. Gulf soil,
drink up these blazing fires.
One day the baked brick of buildings
shall shed sun-froth and jasmine
and glimmers of lightning.
Be rested now, Gulf soil,
and wait for me.
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