August 16
Translated by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
I sing of you, migrating heron.
I sing of your whiteness and your sauntering gait in fallow land.
And I sing of you, resident hoopoe.
I sing of your little crown as you gather seeds from a plowed field.
This is how I am, my song is confused,
it plants one foot in fallow land
and another in plowed fields.
Sometimes I recite the resident’s prayer,
other times the prayer of the traveler.
Translated from the Arabic
Notes:
Read the Arabic-language original, “2013-8-16,” and the translator’s note by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.
Source:
Poetry
(September 2023)