Six fresh oranges
in the short grass
on the grave of the founder
of an import/export company,
born in Aleppo.
A toddler strains against
his mother’s grip: Ball!
How to explain
the Silk
Road, the souk,
the once-unassailable
hospitality of merchants?
How to explain torture,
a feast of agonies called
the magic carpet?
A cricket plays his hit single.
Ball. Ball.
Such longing!
In Syria, they say
a narrow spot can contain
a thousand friends.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Passage to Exile
- Sacred Teachings of the Ancient Victorians
- Hedera helix
- Boneyard Dogs
- Import/Export
- Mutiny
- In Loving Memory
- One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
- Horror Fictions
- Extremophile
- Curating the Dead
- Artifactual
- Among the Brambles
- Heat Indices
- Grief Bacon
- If there were such things as ghosts
- The life of the body
- The Angel of Confession
- Ghost-writing
- Death Angels
I appreciated this one a lot, Dave. Beautiful and poignant.
Thanks, Beth. Oddly enough, I think I was reading your latest post at the cassandra pages (the book review about the Lebanese civil war) at the very same time you were reading this!
I like this very much but feel compelled to ask whether the cricket / hit / single / ball combination was a deliberate evocation of both insect and sport or accidental. Because it slightly confused this slow-witted reader.
Thanks. No, not deliberate. “Hit single” was meant to refer exclusively to music — it’s not really a sports term, though “single hit” would be.
Cricketers hit (a) single quite a lot. I should have made the sport I was referring to clearer I think. But no matter :-)
Oh right, cricket! Heard of it. I wondered if I wasn’t triggering some sort of obscure British reaction there.
BAH. I think you mean “English” as well of course as some of the more populous nations of the world.
Meaning, I suppose, that there must be some sort of English national team? How droll. Oh, and look — even the U.S. is an associate member of the International Cricket Council! We must have a team, too. Wow. I had no idea this was such a popular sport. I’m sure it’s all over ESPN-3.