“The Boy’s Dream of Life”
By: Abdel Latif Moubarak (Egyptian Poet)
I. The Seed of Hope
For the boy,
The dream of life is found,
The secret of a joyous innocence,
A psalm in every scripture that blesses their growth.
Your land is toil—
The bending of the stalks,
A yield from the field of hope.
Dreams are cast
Upon a bare, milky path/crossroads—
Illusions.
II. Silence and the River
For the boy,
The dream of life is
Clutching the embers of silence.
Fear is a road…
On its banks, a handful of pain is sown,
A yearning for visions,
For goodness upon the brow of humankind.
And garments washing their soaked faces
On the edge of the Eternal Nile,
Lest they conceal what
We have exposed.
III. The Kingdom and the Dawn
For Paradise is empty, O Land,
Except for…
The Lonely One,
Covering the corpses of the naked.
The Kingdom is His,
And the good ones are for the Sea,
The Kingdom of Temptation.
Wait and see
When the dawn of the beginning
Shall cleave open.
For Fear has filled the wound,
Still,
It breaks free,
A newborn child.