What is this, your Baghdad - you ask me

(Remembering Ahlam)

In the thick of the night,
rough mechanics, death events,
were unexpected.
Emotions trickled away from stone;
there were no voyages to extreme planets,
each with its taste of matter and dust.

Crisp were the nights at that home
in “New Baghdad” of my now lost city.
In those nights, all motherly,
my hope for tomorrow’s meetings
with gentle people was ripped off.

I trampled on a desire of the now distant girl.
But what if her offspring trap me
in their ambush and put a bullet in my head;
would that be customary execution
or children, unknowingly, killing their father?

Yielding to the dizzying rotation of her empty days,
she had me abandoned in an attic -
an ancient photo in sepia.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
Jacó, Saturday, February 7, 2004
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* New Baghdad: a Baghdad suburb.