Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Md Khan


The Bedouin 

Wanderer, search but a moment longer,
what you hope to find is scattered throughout
the dunes of sand you must traverse
and by the gulf of crystalline blue water
where you will pitch your tents.

Pick up, if you must a relic of times
gone past, like hitchhiking memories through
pitiless terrain and invisible borders stationed
with soldiers well aware of bartering your
passage for a bottle of whiskey or a silk tie.

Abandon your ancestral modes of commute,
they can’t help you now for the world has grown
bigger, the outlines of lands erased and expanded,
whiteness growing, filling up maps on pages
meant for your father's poetry.

Uprooted, you are privileged because
a life that is troubled is a life meant for learning,
the hopes of your father, comfort only brings
bitterness, completeness bears no interest,
groundedness, nothing but fatigue.

Carry your homeland in your soul
for a carry-on bag can’t contain it, it can’t
weather a shower of bullets by your enemies,
your Being must conceal it, not to be unpacked
on your journey to homelessness.


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