OUR DAILY NAHN
At dawn brown boys, bare chested, emerge,
their cotton pajama pants loosely strung,
cross the djube facing my Melli Rah home,
pitch yellow bricks to one another
and straddle a bed of mortar,
building Persia again.
In the distance gas flares sputter,
tall wicks inflamed by the snarling wind,
Farsi cries run together in racking sound,
shawls and dark beards beg in the bazaar,
chadors flowing down 24 Metre Street.
Men come down from rooftops,
asleep to their prayers, bowing to Mecca,
await the flat wheel of bread,
the host slowly peeled, hot and flaky,
gifts from mud ovens on cobbled streets,
chanting haly mamnum -- for nahn --
fragrant and abiding.
Poem in FARDA, THE NIGHTINGALES WILL SING
by Diane Moore -- to appear in winter, 2008.
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