They camped before the pearly gates and screamed,
just like the others screamed,
the others whose paths had strayed,
their screams had no identity.
Their lives were lives of sceptics.
The ones who choose to stand with neutrals
will find no haven,
neither in hell nor the Garden of Eden,
will wander space as nomad planets.
Their home was no warm bed
and their exile not their choice.
Many felt no flicker of doubt,
but their homeland couldn’t be trusted.
Don’t think ill of them, they know not
that we are not the ones that we are:
We are what we always found,
what our forebears endowed,
after the sea once parted.
Forefathers are resting in cemeteries –
let them make way for the living,
who made their homes the graves!
Homeland is a cemetery,
you die here, my dear, before you are born.
What so proudly peacocks the streets,
is just a bit of flesh and bone,
the house walls whine and they confess
every second another dead dream,
and the rooms are lived in by the lifeless.
I am underway, and the winds do not bring
what my ships sought to find,
for so virtuous this planet is not.
The eternal rivers do not flow here,
here devils dance with abandon,
while the two angels enjoy
scoring even the smallest deed in my shoulders.
2023 | Mohamad Zahra | Syria