PARADISE

the nightingales have songs to sing
the roses have a scent to overwhelm us
we are still lost in the dark woods

*

Ferried across the river,
the world moves forward,
unaware of the history it moves through.

*

my mother
contemplating the intersections of history
weeps
thinking about her father and grandmother.

*

The river here never dries up,
keeping our unsightly rocks hidden—
God’s strange mercy.

*

Many years inside these concrete walls
with neither a window nor a light
yet the spring
makes its presence known on the other side—
memories of a past I never had.

*

Dipped into the crusty mud
of a dying riverbed, the withered flowers
come back to life again.

*
The strong man
waits calmly for the arrival of his time.
I, with the weary soul, wait in agitation.

*

Peacefully
the followers are asleep in their tents
with all their lights out.
But beside the Tigris,
the pent-up weeping of people
keeps God wakeful.

*

My mother cries as she learns
that we don’t know
the significance of our belief.

*

I shutter when I think
that this day may be forgotten
beneath the rubble of a modern Catechism.

*

Across the Tigris,
the separation transmuted into a reunion for so many
remains a separation for me.

*

crimson-budded rose in the garden
on the outskirts of the city’s Rusafa District
we can carry on a little longer