Hablu L-Waridi
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Bear witness to the love triangles of the cuttlefish.
Inhale the perfume on the landing.
Measure the span of the dragon’s vestigial wings,
Not broad enough for lift-off into the sky.
Separate the lunar mansions.
Carve your initials inside the baobab tree.
Pity the helium balloon that can’t slip through
The narrow loophole incised into the fortress wall,
Then to diminish up into the sky.
Muslims have their Fridays
Jews get Saturdays
Christians have Sundays
But which prayer
Reaches God first?
That depends
Depends? Depends on what?
On the drag coefficient
Of the prayer on its
Way to heaven
What causes drag?
Fricatives
What are fricatives?
Consonants caused
By the frictional passage
Of the expired breath
Through a narrowing
At some point in the
Vocal tract. F V S Z
Th (hard and soft)
“forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who
trespass against us”
Not very aerodynamic
Compare:
qāla llahu la-qad khalaqnā
l-‘insāna wa naḥnu ‘aqrabu
‘ilayhi mina ḥablu l-warīdi
God said, “we created humanity,
And we are closer to him
Than the jugular vein.”
And the pulse is camouflaged by the life,
And the psalmist is taken hostage by the carillon,
And the sky is blocked out by earthly fetters,
And the prayer is trapped, like a balloon, like a dragon,
And the tongue triumphs over an old scripture,
And the heart is the ticket out of this sentence.
Inhale the perfume on the landing.
Measure the span of the dragon’s vestigial wings,
Not broad enough for lift-off into the sky.
Separate the lunar mansions.
Carve your initials inside the baobab tree.
Pity the helium balloon that can’t slip through
The narrow loophole incised into the fortress wall,
Then to diminish up into the sky.
Muslims have their Fridays
Jews get Saturdays
Christians have Sundays
But which prayer
Reaches God first?
That depends
Depends? Depends on what?
On the drag coefficient
Of the prayer on its
Way to heaven
What causes drag?
Fricatives
What are fricatives?
Consonants caused
By the frictional passage
Of the expired breath
Through a narrowing
At some point in the
Vocal tract. F V S Z
Th (hard and soft)
“forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who
trespass against us”
Not very aerodynamic
Compare:
qāla llahu la-qad khalaqnā
l-‘insāna wa naḥnu ‘aqrabu
‘ilayhi mina ḥablu l-warīdi
God said, “we created humanity,
And we are closer to him
Than the jugular vein.”
And the pulse is camouflaged by the life,
And the psalmist is taken hostage by the carillon,
And the sky is blocked out by earthly fetters,
And the prayer is trapped, like a balloon, like a dragon,
And the tongue triumphs over an old scripture,
And the heart is the ticket out of this sentence.
Jesse Hilson is a freelance newspaper reporter, photographer, and writer living in the western Catskills in New York State. He has been writing poetry since 2011. He has an interest in foreign languages and translation and one of his favorite books is After Babel by George Steiner.