from Poets.org “Stone Oven”

Stone Oven

Kasr Avenue was where the birds lived,

In a mud silo millet seeds flourished

All winter long and through the dry season

Laila was in my soul, also Majnoon’s madness.

I was a girl growing up and you, crossing the

Nile—yes a flat boat is all you had—

Came in, trousers wet and flapping,

Sat down with your back to me.

Hunayn ibn Ishaq the great physician

Thought of the heart as the oven of the body.

In the Grand Hotel the waiters wear

Cummerbunds, always maroon, over tunics, white

I asked for a lemonade with crushed ice.

Majnoon lived with his goats in the desert north of here

On a mountain of sand, where the sky turns dark

The color of millet burnt in a stone oven.

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