…

Before you
many
artists
produced gazelles
from interwoven leaves
and branches

or painted
a flock
in the contours of the foothills,
its shepherd
hidden
in a zigzag of cloud and summit –

or – with their own bellies full,
they painted
hungry stags, bellowing
in misty, manicured forests.

You, paint lines of mourning,
of metal and mortar,
of smoke, suffering and lies!
Since silence
is not our faith.

The silence of water
could be drought
and a cry of thirst.

The silence of wheat
could be the roar of hunger,
of famine

while the silence of sunshine
is darkness –

but the silence of
humanity
is a nothingness, a godless void.

Paint this roar!

Paint my era
in the arc of a whip,
in its smirking pain.

Paint my neighbour,
estranged from hope and God.
And paint our dignity
looted and sold for dinars and dirhams.

We, who had all the words in the world
said nothing of worth
since one word,
just one word was missing:
Freedom!

We didn’t say it. Paint it!