Meeting Muhammad
Meeting Muhammad
Appears in Midnight Cargo (an earlier version appears in Poetry Despite/Music Despite: Eternal War Requiem)
I.
You seek a poem to shape your voice.
You search faces. Search objects afloat in the dust.
Struggle to name them, write them. Recall.
An Iraqi boy is here.
He fills sandbags in sandals
wades smog and curses
laughs in defiance
wears a heavy metal tee.
He shovels away
for rich man’s dirt pay
hired to fill, stack sandbags
to help shield
our United States encampment.
You are thankful to remember
however saddened to feel
the grit of your uniform
the heft of your rifle
observing him as a guard again
sounding out the name
of this child you meet again.
Ahmed?
Abadi?
Gabir?
Muhammad?
Muhammad: three syllables so fraught
yet polished
a name which breathes alliteration:
Muhammad
(refugee among a million?)
Muhammad
(lost?)
He sinks his spade
into sands long subsumed
no answer to offer
no words to speak.
II.
You walk with Muhammad
on the cold star
suns like dust
in the dome of the universe.
Ask him, as one prods a soldier
for a story long buried:
What might you teach?
What might you share?
His sidelong stare offers no comfort
as you presume what the boy is thinking:
just stop.
Just stop.
Stop for the ruins that sprout up
from these prophetic lands
thousands of years, balancing.
Stop for the Mosque of Mosul,
towers shattered
for Ramadi, in ruins—
Stop for this archeology of mourning
in a world full of needs
where out beyond the wreckage
awaits an icy-black sea.
Stop, look: a rowboat on the shore.
Then the boy’s silent gesture
to climb aboard.
Can you not (or will you not) go?
Think: what is one to do?
What is one to say?
Meet up in Lesvos?
Send money for the cause?
He never speaks. Only slips a note
into your pocket, provides a trace
of what you have sought.
His oars stir the glassy waters
as he rows off into darkness
as you stand ashore
and read his poetry
repeat the sorrow
of this exchange
repeat the sorrow
of this exchange