Issue 51, Winter 1971
It was no more than the description of a burst of rain
and handkerchiefs of lightning which burned the secret of trees—
then why did they resist her?
When she said that something different from this water
runs in the river
and the people of the shore are statues and other things,
why did they torture her?
When she told them the forest was abounding with secrets
and the moon was stabbed with a carving knife
and the blood of the nightingale was on that stone, abandoned,
why did they resist her?
Why did they torture her?
When she said, my country is a mountain of sweat
and on the small bridge a man is dying
and darkness burning
the Sultan was angry
and the Sultan is an imaginative creature.
He said, “The fault is in the mirror
so let your singer be silent
and let my kingdom from the Nile to the Euphrates be.”
and he shouted, “Put that poem in prison!”
The torture room, for security,
is a thousand times better than an anthem or a newspaper.