Dreamers of Cairo

Perspectives

On a spinning wheel of Sahel,

I spin cotton, day and night.

Threads of desires and its besotted dreams,

Of persuasions and fragile guilt,

Of quagmires and its strangled knots,

Of perspectives, on which they are all built.

In the loneliness of the deserted wilderness,

Do not wander, O, naïve heart!

Even upon deprivation of all the thirst and rain,

Do not run like a thirsty wave in its own river,

Do not flutter like a bird in a cage,

Do not glimmer like a mermaid hidden,

Do not wrestle like a loose plume in wind,

Yet, as I spin cotton under the night lamp,

What pulsates you in every direction?

Utter not, until I speak.

You dream of unheard lands and seas,

Of unseen mezzanines and divine paths,

Of cryptic languages that utter truth,

And paths stuck in their own ways.

Of blinding shades and mirror-like talks,

Of their piercing sound, as they fall.

Of unscathed swords and relinquished thrones,

Of silent perspective that controls them all.

As you step closer on the road untaken,

May your strides be firmer than before,

Your convictions steadier than the wind,

Your speech gentler than the rose petals,

And your nerves conscious of thousand hints.

So when you carry them on your fatigued shoulders,

You will know that you are not alone.

Encircling you, are the white sands and the brown,

The Blue Nile and the White,

And every grain that drifts on the either end,

A grueling anonymity bifurcates them all,

From religion to class distinction,

I called it borders but, perspectives you call!