I am passing through burning villages,
glare of sharp flames and piercing screams.
It is my poem that arrives first,
touching the charred bodies of women in veils.
I see my poem itself scorched in many places.

​

Even now they snatch my poem,
use it like a new kind of gun,
pumping purple poison—new idioms of war—
into the lungs of the innocent.
Each word returns wounded, each line learns to bleed.

​

Slowly I enter the forbidden territoryof violence against violence;
they find my arrival obscene,
a vulgar disturbance in their order,
and wash my poem in opium water for their own comfort.

​

Now my poem cries out like a life being taken—
without language, without rhythm.
Strangely, they have taken my country
in the names of the dead, and call it a living paradise.

​

My eyes are stiffened with the scabs of memory.
I know I cannot travel further—
the road closes inside me.
I bury the remains of my poem in the backyard —
a miracle happens:
flowers of peace bloom in the desert!