Ojalá

Arabic letters looks like elegant squiggles in the sand

I wonder if this is how this script was created

Poems written by the sand,

Prayers made by shifting winds before your very eyes.

In Spanish, we say, ojalá,

It means, hopefully

And comes directly from our Spanish-Islamic past, O Allah, if god wills it!

I watch the news and see the Arab world, miscast, misused

I watch the news, I see a boy.

His sandals are too small,

Three or four years old and already he understands about making do.

He is a bombed black pixie

Lost in front of a fireball

That was perhaps his mother

That was perhaps his favorite place to play

That was perhaps the greenest hilltop on this arid plain

At 2 or 3 his little cracked heels know fire, know sand.

At 2 or 3 his face announces the collapse of reason

Or reasons, for none will do.

Because if he survives this or the cataract of other fires

That from the sky brand his new understanding of being

Then he will remember this.

No reason will do

And he will remember this –

This sand burning to glass,

Reflecting what should not be so

The poems gone.

Sweet baby, if you survive this

What other fires will you see?

If you survive this

I will understand if you hate

I will understand your slaps and bites

I will understand the blank extinguishing of hope in your wake.

But, precious precious boy,

May you do better than what was done to you.

May you be like the proud warriors of the caliphate in Al-Andalus,

Who allowed Christians, and Jews and Muslims to live together

To create beauty together, rather than alone.

Warriors,

Who remembered poems in the sand,

Who gave Spanish songs their longing wail,

Ripping from its throat.

I rip this from my throat,

For you, sweet baby boy.

Those sands burning your little feet

I beg for them to be poems and prayers underneath you.

May they sustain you, may they keep you safe, and

Ojalá, ojalá, ojalá may you know peace.

Ojalá: Recent Books