August 16, 2013

I sing of you, migrating heron.

I sing of your whiteness and your sauntering gait in fallow land.

And I sing of you, resident hoopoe.

I sing of your little crown as you gather seeds from a plowed field.

This is how I am, my song is confused,

it plants one foot in fallow land

and another in plowed fields.

Sometimes I recite the resident’s prayer,

other times the prayer of the traveler.

-----Zakaria Mohammed (1951-2023), Palestinian poet, journalist, and novelist (translated from Arabic by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha)