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I from
"Songs of Exile"
Funny
that I, who might have found myself
in jail in another place and time, Come halfway around the
world to serve a prison guard -
Certainly a punishment to fit the crime. They, down in the
prison yard, pacing like leopards in
a cage - I, a captive audience in the tower,
observing them hour by hour. I always suspected that
the jailer's incarcerated too. In
a broader sense, the question's who
is in his natural habitat? And if both of us, then who's the
mouse and who's the cat?
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II (from
"Architectural Elements")
Elements
of Arabic architecture, each altogether suggestive of some
hidden pleasure: the Dome of the Breast; the Arch of the
Torso; the minaret's preeminence; the interplay of
prurience and prudery, revelation and concealment, a dance
of seven veils or Sheharazade's tales within tales. ...
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I from Hamsin
(East Wind)
The
east wind brings ill tidings called hamsin, sharaav, sirocco,
a desert wind, a gritty wind penetrating the nostrils,
filling the mouth to the back teeth. It is better not to
speak. The mind reels, inflamed, caught under a magnifying
glass. An east wind parted the Red Sea, "the wind of
judgment," a commentator called it.
A
shift in atmosphere is detected as the weather forecast fades
into a sandstorm of white noise. The weatherman's voice
remains calm even as it is overcome by the words of the
Prophet. ...
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X from Songs of Exile
Call
me Gershom, a stranger in a
strange land. Call me Menassah,
for I have forgotten my father's house. Call me
Maher-shalal-hash-baz, hasten booty
hasten spoil. Call me Mara, the bitter one. Call me
Benoni, son of sorrow and toil. Call me Cain, behold a man,
an exile and an exile's son. And
what of the sons whom I begot back in
Babylon, Egypt, or was it Rome? Will they forget; I will not.
And one question I ask of God: Is this the land of honey
or the land
of Nod?
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