Wave-rising water
lapping at the storied banks
where the dead see tribute
turning
with the soil
of the land
they’ve returned to,
tears ‘n blood
upon the saltful earth!
As the eagle o’er the valley depths,
twilight encircles…
From jabal lubnān’s grieving slopes – aaoooooffah!
From nahar al-sharieat’s bleeding waters – aaoooffah! oooffah!
Anger-lament.
Sorrow-rage.
With these, th’story begins:
“Oh eye, oh night…” The Sha’ir speaks, hakawati-heartbeat pulsing. Itinerant she wanders, truth ‘n history upon her lips, her story moving through the air as the roots through soil. “The Fellaheen make musicsong dance arable about the earth! The wind is the tatreez, lineage-lined, draping down its soul-motif! Listen to the ataaba that comes as a fiercesome call; as a plaintly dirge…”
I was born here!
I was made here!
I belong here!
Here is home!
I am this place!
I am Here!
Here is me!
Chasing down the embers of the far, westfallen sun, the young ‘n fiery night matures, dominant.
“The ghosts of the Earth-Sprung spirit off the stars for to haunt the settled land with blackness, as silence screeches through the streets of the strange new town atop the valley’s crest…”
Every door was locked, secured within a frame that was painted lamb’s-blood red. Plagued by the terror of the blackened silence, families hid from the night. Rage-wisps of gath’ring angel-cloud reared up above the cowering homes, hailing stones in a barrage by a thousand hands.
“Raining down revolt – those children traumatised to violence, draped in their rubble-cloaks ‘n marked with headshot-holes ‘n shrapnel! First-born… Last-born… Just-born… All born on promised land. All murdered on the land that gave them life.”
Mal’akh ha-Maweth
Mal’ak al-Maut
“Halt – the hail of stones is done! The buildings stand deformed! Yet fast they hold, buttressed by the power of race-hatred, greed, ‘n apathy!”
In the ominous roar of silence ‘n the blaze of the blinding fire of black, the valleyside is host to a newborn’s cries. To a mother ‘n a father of the settler town were they birthed unto this blood-stained earth, where the roots beneath the soil of the trees rise, shuddering, tearing at this new child’s home.
“Anger-lament! Sorrow-rage! See now, there, where that house is razed! In its ruin is the baby ‘midst their parent’s arms, huddled ‘mongst their home’s foundations!”
Mal’ak al-Maut
Mal’akh ha-Maweth
Cold…
Sweeping –
life-lifted; fall.
Dead, the parents fall away as the angel lifts the child, carrying them over to the river’s rushreed banks for to place them down. Wrapped within a towel, the child looks up at the angel smouldering above them. In their pristine eyes, these words do they summon-speak:
I was born here…
I was made here…
I belong here…
Here is home…
The angel looks down upon the child that was born on this land this night. The angel emanates these words with hate-heart meaning:
It is not for the beneficiaries of empire to barter with the rage of the indigenous.
And so the angel kills the new-born child, wisp-vengeance-cloud about their neck. Through the strangulations, the baby’s final breath says:
Here is home…
Anger-lament.
Sorrow-rage.
With these, th’story continues.
“See the dawnfire spreading ‘cross a world meting death to children…”
Image credit – Nikanor Chernetsov
william altoft 