By Fadi Abu Deeb

In Aleppo, Krishna was my friend

He challenged me to call the peering eyes of women

With different meanings of love

To recognize the color of wheat in their questioning faces.

He used to ask me if I knew,

Why the small houses did not have roofs,

And why the whitewashed walls stretched toward the caves of space
I had become perplexed with the enigma

And did not answer.

***

Krishna was a friend without a hope in immortality

He used to be born behind curtains,

In the songs of evenings,

In the whiteness of nights and in foreign dreams.

He used to die during the day,

Behind the windows lit by sun,

In the crowded vehicles,

And in the familiarity of the streets with the hungry wolves,

In the confusion that slowly devoured

The necks of youth and the eyes of girls.