Wednesday, July 26, 2006

From the poem Lamentation in Baghdad by Iraqi poet Abdul-Wahab Al-Bayyati (my translation):
"I am searching for a cloud,
that is green
to wipe out melancholy
from me
to carry me
to the mainland of my homeland
to the fields of lilies
to grant me
a butterfly and a star
and a drop to whet my thirst
and a word
because the waters of the Tigris
have been muddied
and have not run
except to flood dams
and villages
So who will, I wonder,
wash me with its water
and under the shadow of its
palmtrees bury me?"