Casablanca the winter is over and I’m still here
After three quarters of a year You handle so many contradictions with style I must admit You’re not bad looking From the right angles Even beautiful But you don’t hide your ugly sides well I guess you can’t Busy trying to cope with your own impatient cadence And the constant arrival of people Rich and poor Mostly poor Hoping for more Biting smiling selling screaming Casablanca I’m caught in your hectic dance Like any immigrant I’m ambivalent Good days and bad Today for a moment I broke out of you to notice the ocean As I often have over the months Still there So much bigger deeper longer in its breaths It could just take over and bust the whole place up And sometimes it does strike a few blows But mostly it respects the tiny shoreline boundary Accepting To remain a reminder for us Of other cycles Other scales of being Anyway, Casablanca, I’m still here Now watching your children clean beach chairs Preparing for the summer I haven’t taken you all in You escape my rational mind traps Too slow for you I have no choice but to return to poetry To know you I’ve got to tell you I see a lot of violence Barbarians everywhere At least it seems to me that’s how you treat them They are hungry Casablanca And speak the languages of your ancestors Your own deep thoughts use the same North African tongues No matter how much French you use And how many monuments you keep to praise the invaders your forefathers kicked out Just a few decades ago You are so colonial—it really upsets me—I don’t know whether to scream or cry But who am I? After all when my life broke down in Canada You welcomed me a refugee and have treated me hospitably ever since I came to you like so many others with ambitions and aspirations I must really try to be helpful Because you, Casablanca, and cities like you Probably hold the future of humanity within your ever-expanding bosoms Here is where we make it or break it All or nothing Casablanca you are exciting I think I’ll stay a while Inshallah
1 Comment
Sweet Hamdouls
5/26/2014 02:52:39 am
What? !? This poem just held me fast... like hotel bedsheets that wont give up the slack. Cozy, tight, cool and paid for. Strange comfort indeed!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorTransdisciplinary scholar of Islam and Sufism. Archives
March 2023
Categories
All
|