Poetry

Tears of a Mother

A Trilogy, Written in the Wake of 9/11

Photo by Mehdi Sepehri on Unsplash

I. A Mother Weeps

With hungry eyes and fearful glance
Her child squats with dirty feet
in crumbling doorways -
Wonders why angry men
Burn flags, feed each other bullets.
Nurtured in ignorance, fed on hate
He plays at dangerous games
And shouts, “I am a man!”
No food today, and yet
His belly’s rounded, full of faith
And dynamite.
A mother weeps.

II. A Daughter Comes of Age

At half past six, she sits alone,
With a week-old crust
of tadig and a pan
of rusty, dusty water
and the memory of angry words -
words they never
read from the Koran.

At seven, she crawls inside
The hated veil,
Shroud of mystery,
Mother’s womb,
Just to see what it feels like,
To be a woman.