She comes to me with a bowl of soup <br />when I am besieged by <br />fumes <br />of cheap arak. <br />She comes to me in dusty noons. <br />And with each sunset night snatches <br />she comes to me with <br />an evening star. <br />In the cafes she sits to bitter tea. <br />In the market she sells cheese <br />and buffalo livers. <br />She dusts her used-clothing stores, <br />searching for bones in a bowl of soup, <br />for milk to the lips of a child <br />and a glimmer in a pair of eyes <br />and something a woman does not yet know <br />and streets where water never greens. <br />At night <br />she roams among houses abandoned by the poor <br />and churches where a muffled mass fades <br />and huts where poor girls faint. <br />At midnight <br />she returns to her enchanted shelter <br />behind muddy streets, <br />carrying the bread of the dead, <br />myrtle flowers, <br />slivers of buffalo liver <br />and two bones for a bowl of soup. <br />At dawn she stops by all her houses, <br />waking all her children, <br />dragging them to the street, <br />the thousands waiting to march on Baghdad. <br /> <br />Translated by Khaled Mattawa<br /><br />Saadi Youssef<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-new-baghdad/
