Arab Spring

From Tripoli to Cairo I saw the intifada leftover After Tunisia and Yemen Like a dam broken After it had sucked life from dry sand Morocco, Kuwait, Djibouti and Oman I heard birds singing at the cliff Falsetto dawn In the rift valley of religion And water pouring from each sweat Flood the root of the poisoned tree Not Regina Not Phoenix dactylifera Not if the honey killed the bee. Some have fallen Shaken by the protest of the wind Some stay uneasy For it is the season of orchestrated discontent I see nothing to applause Except that stability And the availability of corn Are rare in democracy there. For culture is soil and climate That every root begins with And nothing strange may grow In a rich soil's barren love. Heroes there and villains Have ridden sand forever They do no swim this mediation well Spring rain brings flash floods And then vulture upon vulture Circling the corner of the eye. Too bad the spring Shook the blossoms off in breeze I smell the empty branches The resin bleeding in the new night Hot summer's dead piled up Against a Syrian wall. I pray for the autumn worm And the bones winter white My sajada is Mecca strewn And in my head the adhaan The adhaan, an intoxicated bell Calls me out of grief.