In Subino’s square you embraced me with an eagle’s expansive wings
and I followed you up a path so steep it could only be compared
to the outstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty,
but pointing towards your home not towards New York!
Such a climb might suit a footballer like Ronaldo
but not a poet articulate with speech and sighs, like me.
Still, I walked the two hundred steps spurred to reach
the dwelling of a woman whose life passed
as she raised her voice in support of the oppressed
and forgot to have a child to immortalize her eighty years
of struggle like a blade slashing through slaughter.
“Gate of the Sun.”
Those words on a wall greeted me high up the path
written to welcome refugees to whom you gave asylum
whenever they fled a country here or there shattered by a tyrant.
We turned left to your abode. O leftist who held my hand
as if you were mother to all their mothers, have we arrived?
Not yet, you said.
We continued the ascent to a house you had prepared for your visitors.
I entered exhausted but quickly regained my strength as I struggled
from floor to floor filled with pictures of the oppressed. Here I remembered Raeda Taha
– she warned me not to visit you without bringing a handful of the country’s soil.
Tell me Raeda, what souvenir should I bring with me?
Wherever I turn, the place overflows with pictures of the tragedies I left behind
and I find myself with one who knows my people better than me.
You were a homeland for my rebirth; for burying both my exiles
thank you Luisa Morgantini.
That’s all I can say now as I return to the war while
the reassurance you gave me lifts my tired legs
and provides a calm that I did not know
like the returnees to whom you bade farewell before me
on the shoulders of hope.
and I followed you up a path so steep it could only be compared
to the outstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty,
but pointing towards your home not towards New York!
Such a climb might suit a footballer like Ronaldo
but not a poet articulate with speech and sighs, like me.
Still, I walked the two hundred steps spurred to reach
the dwelling of a woman whose life passed
as she raised her voice in support of the oppressed
and forgot to have a child to immortalize her eighty years
of struggle like a blade slashing through slaughter.
“Gate of the Sun.”
Those words on a wall greeted me high up the path
written to welcome refugees to whom you gave asylum
whenever they fled a country here or there shattered by a tyrant.
We turned left to your abode. O leftist who held my hand
as if you were mother to all their mothers, have we arrived?
Not yet, you said.
We continued the ascent to a house you had prepared for your visitors.
I entered exhausted but quickly regained my strength as I struggled
from floor to floor filled with pictures of the oppressed. Here I remembered Raeda Taha
– she warned me not to visit you without bringing a handful of the country’s soil.
Tell me Raeda, what souvenir should I bring with me?
Wherever I turn, the place overflows with pictures of the tragedies I left behind
and I find myself with one who knows my people better than me.
You were a homeland for my rebirth; for burying both my exiles
thank you Luisa Morgantini.
That’s all I can say now as I return to the war while
the reassurance you gave me lifts my tired legs
and provides a calm that I did not know
like the returnees to whom you bade farewell before me
on the shoulders of hope.