Seeing And Calling Poem by Fawzi Karim

The god I have always denied enters the house.
My father, lying in white, is in his death agonies.
My mother, sisters, brother, half-circled around Him,
avert their eyes.
Only I have seen the god coming in.
Only I am trying not to look at him.
The god is crying, this god I have always denied.
He is full of compassion, pity.
The shadow of death hangs over the family.
Soon there will be nothing but darkness.
A void will engulf my father's body.
We are listening.
Our sole right is to beg him.
We cannot ask the question which is always on our lips,
Yearning to be spoken.
From such frustration flows our bitterness.
Bent-backed is the god, smitten by time,
A ruined building, sole refuge now
For refugees from who knows where.
He slips away, so cautiously,
And, patiently, unseen, I follow after,
Both lost, in the way a star is lost,
through desert dust, and mirages
of water, which ever recedes from us,
and travellers who went before...
The bones repeat the voice of the winds.
Across wind-lashed spaces, the wolves howl on.
We are listening.
Our sole right is to beg him.
We cannot ask the question which is always on our lips,
Yearning to be spoken.
From such frustration flows our bitterness.