Poetry by Omar Sabbagh
Maha Faris Sabbagh
Tall tales were never her forte; that was rum,
And she was too English for that. And yet, wishing
For large round bangles to sing and serenade her ears,
Guilty golden circles, evoking syrup and the miracle
Of a clean-run woman, pure, chaste – but also fired,
Waylaid, littered, at the marketplace of all her desires:
Wondrous, painterly, pointillist… She’s held journeys
In the musky palms of her clay-thick hands, where
The verb to wander’s become the working-metaphor for
The closed minuet of a sound yet sounding, ample
Mind: sharp, seizing, a moonbeam at decorous night –
A white fandango on a blue, on a blue that was just as white…
Gypsy-mother, then – swan and stranger in the svelte and solid sum
Of all your innocence: I stay whole, made, by what you bring.
Summer Heat, Nothing Doing
Dubai
There is a type of idleness which ill-befits
The true connoisseurs of idleness – lit
As they are by the shade of their idle wits…
In the mad summer heat here: the princely
Vise, squeezing us like motes of salt – sweaty
Finds in a bee-yellowed sunbaked emirate –
Is a sheikh from a different hotter kingdom,
An un-blessed realm where no reins drum
Against the neck and shoulders of some
Dark filly – to slow and steer, to save and sum…
In the gland of tumescent heat: all are put out to stud.
So we mate the AC, and await the slow dread-cold
To drape us, its upstart-regalia – the bold
Awning from the shutters above our heads…
And the cool veil to thank for this – nicely-colored-lead –
Is a verdigris we prefer, beneath the outdoor
Heat we scuttle from: like rats on ratty form…
But our sinking ship’s no wavy sea, no licit door
Of glorious water, to which to dive-in and adore.
The only gate to flee him from this wizardly wake
May be a stable in paradise, a pen; and a pen for a pen’s sake.