Till Oum Kulthoum Sings

Let us live in the eyes of the night

Where the children spring from broken mattresses

Into graveyards and underpasses 

Where they still huddle together to listen to radios

All one thousand and one nights

They have eyes in the carnage of Cairo

And while she moaned over batteries and cars stuck on bridges

She reminded them that the eyes had turned deserts into gardens

All in the blink of One love

She transcends the nation of her graveyard and speaks

The dance of Saladin's gold Eagle

That took flight from her voice and melted into liquid prayers

That she recited just as a little girl

As her voice nestled between the dinner of lovers

And the impatience of taxi drivers was thought to be peace

Yearning screeched through the drumming of death in numbered heartbeats

Flying to the stage just before the opening curtain 

When masses transcended upon Freedom without really knowing what it meant

and chords of violin strings were plucked like eyebrows, smoothly curving

To her Voice 

Telling the sunlight, Come on over! Come on over! After one year, not before!

And the audience roared. And still the people died.

Awsiflak! she screams to her beloved as he is trampled by the stockpile

Of the Arab World's expectations demanding him to blossom

Awsiflak! she screams to the soldiers as their clubs are caught 

By the grasp of motherland,

Batons falling to the ground,

Crashing

Picked back up 
And waived above her head like microphones

We were not in love yesterday, and so we do remember

How lonely our bellies felt when we felt the first crack of hunger

But today we are in love with the voice in our head 

Who asks for minutes on end, Al Zay

As the world stares up 

Singing to the night and its sky,

Its stars and moons

Keeping awake all night

Her spirit in a war between 

History, death, and future

Oh where is her voice

That sang the color of blushing cheeks that came

as Freedom from monarchy

Had been replaced by led bulleted bars

Oh Egypt, oh what shame

They ask, What is life

And we say, A night like tonight

When children flee the gas of crowns

When police emerge from the costumes of saints

We followed the Star of the East

Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut trembling

Under the cries of an empty echo of her being 


We hold hands to hide our eagle in the nest of our locked fingers

As they spray us with the stench of tears

Egypt, flipping the cassette over and over

Anticipating the introduction 
Waiting for the applause, the shouts of excited men,
The climax, the roar of completion

Rehearsing love making

The moans, her longing, the saxophone crying

the Rebirth of Egypt

She begins,

our lips quiver.

Oum Kulthum is singing 

Now, in the steps of our march

You and I my love, my sweetheart 

Walk with me one thousand and one nights

until they all become equal 
In the rhythm of fortitude and nation
As we watch our Child take her first steps