The light isn’t surrounded by guards

I am the son of my father and Uncle Amir,
I am the son of the soil and of the plow,
a sum total in one single heart
flowing into the wounds of the people.
The throes of my agonies are in
the pulse of this land.
I am the son of my father and Uncle Amir
who taught me to be a sculptor,
to sculpt from the darkness of the night
a luminous horse with my chisel.
I am the son of my father and Uncle Amir,
my friend, my companion — a colleague
because he lent me his glasses.
He dissolved me in his sorrows
and warmed me in the circle of his arms
on internment’s cold nights.
His gaze was a duvet of love atop the sleepers
and on those sharing
their blankets on the floor.
There is still goodness in this life, he says,
as long as there’s charity —
among the poor, for the poor —
enriching both the giver and the receiver.
My son, he says, bitterness is for the past.
There is only what’s left.
His sweet laughter reflects on his cheeks.
Hey, you know what, Uncle Amir, my friend?
I am like Egypt in chains, I make pennies
and live on a gulp of air when starved,
when the change is scarce.
When their palms wrung our necks,
and our souls were suffocated by a hundred chokes,
we relaxed and stretched out —
an inch or a handspan in her prison.
Happy and sad by turns like me,
she cries in the muteness of night and together
we laugh when someone asks…
with God’s grace we get by, we say.
I am like Egypt in chains.
I look like my father in the photo,
with his worries and suffering.
Our hopes walked slowly at first,
but now they’ve stopped in their tracks.
They see that pain remains as long as there’s life on earth.
But we two are different from each other
in our suffering and in its significance.
My father hasn’t shed a tear.
He abandons life — when it wrongs him,
and returns to it — when it’s fair.
He said, Life upturns or balances the meaning of our existence.
The world is unjust
even when it’s fair.
Even if a child holds back a tear,
it’s unable to change the lies of this world.
When his laughter vanishes and reappears,
before my eyes can adjust, there it is again,
all at once, like a dawning sun.
He would rise alone,
hum the melody of his moans
to the rhythm of his pain.
His violin strings trilled.
In his love of birds, he was Sufi,
and he echoed its spiritual soliloquies,
but he neither walked nor reposed at night.
On a stairway he danced
between hope and helplessness
didn’t waver on the bridge or give up,
he crossed over.
And he inherited my grandfather’s stoop,
along with the spirit of a toddler
delighted by his own first steps,
which he would imitate with his cane.
Hey, Amir, prince of princes, I also limp along,
except I glimpse from afar certain traits
of a star or moon, so I’ve hobbled along on hope,
even hopped on one foot,
but made it all the way to the end.
I never said that turning back would be easier —
my despair side-tracked me, so I’m delayed.
I am in no hurry with you all.
Hey Amir, I’m being patient.
We will sculpt the horse with bells that ring in
the dawn and reverberate with song.
We will still lean on hope and, behind
our moon in a cell, push on.
We will sculpt the mare with feeling,
our heartbeats pounding with life,
despite poverty and want,
mouthfuls scraped from the bowl.
As I pass by each of you
I’ll share my smile equally,
my poetry to the people.
Amir, tell my father Fouad
I’ll sing and be sure to say: Hey guys,
Rays of light aren’t surrounded by guards.