Elegy to a Kurdish father

Elegy to a Kurdish father
for Ekim Erdogan

Alone in a green meadow I pray,
not on my knees but hands held high.

I think of the Kurdish girl in the London fog—
her Baba is gone, the night has come.

Behind the East End walls a bluesy soulful note.
The cockney drink bitter beer, rattle and chat.

But she is not there, she is a continent away—

for the Sultans ruled from Constantinople to Budapest
from Medina to Algiers—

and in the muscle of the coffee the tendons of kabobs
there is a tone in her Baba’s voice, a light in a dark green forest.

[...] Read more

poem by Leo Briones
Added by Poetry Lover
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