The Dawn Fairy
You are changing... You have changed greatly I dare not look at you... for fear that I will not see you. —Barbossa, The Inferno That is the dawn fairy she comes to me every evening building for her dreams a homeland of air and then goes towards the river scattering her sorrows into the stream that they may be eaten by the fish. Kings sprout up in her wounds but without a kingdom she remains. Upon life's wall she used to draw a dawn of myrtle and embrider out of the night of gloom a moon upon which the birds of drowsiness fed... Life opens a window that overlooks your first tear, a tear shared out by the poor. She promised herself to an illusion to a moment that swings between the promise and the sky and for the sake of the promise and for the sake of the sky ...she prays... —Our Father who art within hearts Give us this day our daily love And forgive us our trespasses And out of our longing make a home for all the birds. —Dunya Mikhail. Trans. Samira Kawar. The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology. Ed. Nathalie Handal. NY: Interlink Books, 2001.