On Tolerance
Dubai

When I see a beast with a human frown,
A grimace that speaks to the world in Clown,
I’ve no real press of questions – no sound
Of an arrowing sort leaves my mouth…

And when I see a man whose smile’s a machine
Cogged for disaster, that boon, his deep humanity, seen
To be frittered and spent – I’m able to glean
A few tell-tale things: that this man, glum, unfree

At the dock where the mind’s last sail may be,
Is a man, or mast, whose wood’s quite deftly broken…
And the tic of such riven crookedness might be
A token spelling undue words, syllables like sins…

But when, at the last, I see myself – a toughed metal also
Broken: I see this wide perfection, the gifts of all my flaws.

Portrait Of A Lady,
Or,
Burning Of The Books

Friends like grasses in her field,
Merchants, marketers and racketeers,
Speak softly, kindly, about the real – still,
Stilled, and without a beat: blind castratos…

And though their sins are songs like mine, oval, red,
Their coloured hearts forge and render 
Crimson tighter, bloodier, here 
Among the egoists… 
Here, among
The egoists, some are un-preferred,
Not present with the gifts of that liturgy
Between the mind and its truer berth.
And here, among the egoists, flames
Replace a lady’s matter, a page, a page
Or two…

All goes charred, now as then,
All goes gone, black and spent and
Just 
ember-less…  

And no eye blinks
And no bell rings.

Dr. Omar Sabbagh 
Associate Editor