DOVES ADDRESSING HAWKS
(from a roof in Cairo, Egypt)
“Before this hour is pried by your hawk’s wing
rising from its gray nest above the lawns
and shades of the lifting day, early to fling
a furrow in the sun and cleave our songs
apart from the strong and heartless not our own,
we would hurl nets of cries into the air
to wind you hawks in flight that you drop down,
yourselves prey to our questioning, our fear.
Before the roofs fly from our shallow hells
and there is green fire that unties the pen
with flowering of the flesh in syllables
to pilfer each thing from its foxes’ den,
0 hawks, we must make whole what you have torn.
What womb must we all sleep in to be reborn?”
– Henry Braun
Beautiful work, Henry! Difficult to get at first reading — I needed two go-throughs to get the basic idea, and another extra one to understand the sense of the sestet — but it was worth it.
–Tom
Thank you, Tom. The poem is clearer in Arabic. Clearest in Birdspeak.