POEM BY REEMA HAMZA – IRAQ
IMPROVISATIONS ON A NEARING DAWN
-The Vision-
I saw not eleven stars—
but a tablet, played by echo,
there—where dawn bends gently:
girls and fields
shaking hands with God
in a hymn.
INTERPRETATION
1• Where Dawn Sings:
There, where the morning begins to breathe,
the girls planted their braids into the earth—
and the stalks rose,
bearing the sun’s very first smile.
2• To Touch the Infinite:
When the song rose high,
fields, girls, and sky folded
into a single hand—
and greeted eternity.
3• Fields of Innocence:
In the face of dawn,
the fields murmur the tale of the girls,
each blossom signed
with the ink of a song.
4• The Sacred Vow:
A girl beneath the hush of morning
chants God’s names in verse—
and the rain,
obedient, begins to fall.
5• A Dawn Without End:
There—where the dawn meets the Divine,
the girl becomes a poem,
and the fields blossom
into songs that forget how to end.
6• Ugaritic melody:*
There, where the morning is born,
Ugarit tightens the thread of hope
on a wandering string.
The girl sings—
and the fields rearrange the light,
as if the first letters of the world
were dawning again.
*Ugarit: An ancient city on the Syrian coast that flourished in the second millennium BC, known for its earliest alphabet and recorded music.
(Translated by: Riyadh Abdulwahid)
