Al Qabri Ramos

Patterns of Sorrow by Misha Gordin

 I know the pain without a flag and the healing without a banner

I don't know how to write poems about war, 

nor defend anyone with bladed weapons, 

I don't even know about the weight of 

the soldiers' boots, when they settle 

between sweat and fatigue in the ditches, 

to question themselves as to why a name 

and a homeland. 

That in warlike motives there is no art.

But I know the dry cry of nightmares 

that are not fulfilled in the glottis, of the fear 

of men in the countries where the 

slaughter has taken place in the square.

I know of the care, anguish and misery 

of mothers when their children suffer 

from hunger and drink unrhyming misery, 

made at the expense of so much affluence 

of others (what others are we in a concrete rhyme), 

or the substances that waltz appetizing neons 

and prostituted boys on the streets of Aldoar, 

when the raid van interrupts their frugal ride.

I don't even dare to interrupt the bulimia 

of some because of the rhythm of the world, 

nor do I know about the brands of refrigerators 

that turn into empty forklift bins, filling empty ones, 

in the emptiness of every bulimic, 

nor about the lack of courage in assuming 

repeated mistakes, but I know, on the other hand, 

that tomorrow the sky will have limits 

for those who have the alarm clock 

At 6 a.m., when the day has 24 hours and 

man wants to inhabit more planets, and 

that the rivers are polluted and our souls, 

apparently not either, I know that the open wounds 

will have betadine and serum and I also know that 

you cry and that I cry for all the "six" and "not-six" 

of humanity.

I don't know how to write poems about love, 

but I do know that it exists, somewhere between 

consciousness and sleep.