Between Two Bastions

Between Two Bastions


I am the guestbook pages 
hundreds  of people with a single name 
and many languages sign. 
Elegies chase after me.
I believe in the elephant, if he sings verses,
in music, when it creates itself,
in the flower of the Nile 
when it isolates its soul after death,
in the storyteller, if he takes off his shoes
before lighting the funeral pyre.

I am the earth in clusters of unknown maps.
Reason in the consciousness of unconsciousness.
The smell of fingers in the knitted shawl.
The pencil in its paperless orphanage.

I am the fire-eater on death’s mount.
The dancer in the open-air festivals 
of murderous sheikhs who renounce 
their right to my alms.

I am the book of doubt in the Word.
The temple walls with drawings 
of a thousand scenes of passion.
The tired god as he walks the streets
carrying the secrets spiders 
already revealed.