Christian and Muslim in North Africa
Devoted as that Berber, Augustine
Of Hippo, Antonin defends belief.
Why shouldn’t he? The young man’s mind is clean,
As clean as desert dunes without relief
From blasts of wind and brutal sun, as pure
As cool oasis water, still, untouched.
He has a depth, too, like the prophets, sure
Of his convictions that his heart has clutched
Inside the reverence of his memories.
Inside the clothing on his chest he holds
His reveries of holiness. A breeze
Like moonlight’s innocence across the folds
Of sands is what his thoughts are as he prays.
His intonations are like morning rays.
Yacin: For a Devout Muslim
I wrote a poem for him and he said
That he was pleased to hear that, but he
Won’t read the thing. I know he has a dread
That he won’t understand it. He can’t see
That all I care about is him and want
His heart and blood to echo with the love
I placed inside the sonnet. It won’t daunt
Him if he looks for love alone. Above
The lines, below the lines, between
Them, and beside them there are depths and heights
Of love. The words themselves don’t matter. Seen
Around them and right through them are the lights
Of seraphim, their halos, shining sounds,
And singing wings, where heaven’s love abounds.
To clarify his youthful soul
To clarify his youthful soul, he starves
His body all throughout the daylight hours.
Inside his heart his willing spirit carves
Out spaces dedicated to the powers
Of God at work among his thoughts. His prayers
Are sustenance enough with the nutrition
Of holy words as sauce. The world’s affairs
Are fasted out. Master and the mortician
Of normal appetites, now Yacine feels
The thirst for other, more important needs.
He takes a scimitar to life and peels
Away thin husks to find the hidden seeds.
He plants these in his stomach where they grow
To fruits he licks like angels’ gelid glow.
Inshallah
A blue-eyed Arab shoots through cyberspace,
As straight as from a young god’s golden bow.
The arrowhead is seeking for a place
To lodge in me. The shaft knows where to go,
Just where its pointed end should aim and hit.
It knows to stab me in the chest but goes
Up through my abdomen. It makes a slit
Of pain that is a pleasure, pain that grows
Into that thing called love, which moves in thrills
To beauty that a Berber man can give.
That arrow made of flesh like gold then spills
His love inside. It wants my heart to live.
He is the Atlas mountains, also, there
Inside me, thusting up as peaks in air.