#Poetry ‘The Arabian Daylight’ by Fiza Pathan

The Arabian Daylight

by Fiza Pathan

Red swollen eyes do I behold in the looking-glass,

Veins of scarlet etched upon my iris so white.

Now with a drop of blood from my broken dry lips,

Will I sing to the raven this black hot summer.

The journey ends here, no more can I scribble down

Endless riddles of the outcast and the abandoned leper called true love.

The day sun has set and the moon’s crescent has invaded the heavenly sky.

It’s now time for this lonely scribe to say, goodbye.

I no longer can jot down the scuffle of old,

When I lost you to another, was that just seven years ago?

Well seven steps are now left for me to traverse back to my land in the west.

Where the desert sings it’s never ending lullaby and the enchanting elderly Arab woman

Waits a moment before she is swallowed by the sandy dunes.

Where no cactus of lush green can quench ones thirst.

Therefore in this land of invisible thorns are poets born.

Descendants of Eve do we curse the apple of our doom,

We can’t live together but we also cannot die alone.

Therefore to my home does this heart now wish to go and rest,

Inside my stone cut vault below the heat of the arid region’s sun.

To the brown land do I have to travel tomorrow night,

It’s time to say farewell…thank you, to the fading light.

I will take all my books as well as my horse

And strut across all borders alone, I have no choice.

This day can’t last long and mornings are just an illusion,

Space is dark as dark as the sinful night.

It’s time for me to join my tribe.

I come from a land of waste and of brown snow,

Where a curse is a lesson for the sage under the Dome.

Where serpents are our wet nurses as we are suckled by their teachings,

And are weaned when we are to wed our celibacy.

In this mirage must I now disappear back into,

Where no highland man or woman can get to.

We are like giant scorpions in haste, as we wait with sting erect

To note down the divine word in our fluid.

Our pupils are dead and our tutors are beyond the grave,

The tombstones are our beds and life blood is our drink

To make amends with our baseness.

To this ancient home of mine must I go,

With all my gold coins and my ruby tears.

Don’t follow me anymore than this verse or you might,

Be swallowed by the sword of the sandy warlock.

So long, away I go, do not fret you will remember me still,

These words of mine forever do I leave with you behind.

Gallup must I in my sack cloth and turban

To the horizon this night, towards the Arabian daylight.

No spear do I carry, not a shield to defend me,

But no one can harm me as I am the sands own soil fertile.

Goodbye once again as I take to my flight,

To land where only evil can die, the Arabian daylight.