Who among us belongs to another:
Do you, with the wrinkled face?
Or we, guardians of the road to no return?
Or do we all, Baghdad,
belong to the executioner?

The scent of berries is still on my sleeve,
but the berries have vanished! The fish, too,
no longer travel the streams
but sink together into the sea
as the rivers do!

Who harvests
memory from soil sown with corpses?
Who beats his present with the cane of departure?

Amidst this world of nightmare
this world of water and shadows
our poems stand alone,
a border of barbed wire!

June 9, 2003