AL-KAHINA VARIATIONS
Hasan
“Empire.”
The stars, tonight,
conjure the word for me.
“Empire” is like “sky,”
the one thing that envelops all the glistening bodies.
How these stars stretch farther and farther
or if there is no end, endlessly.
Could “empire” be like this?
My hand waves a command; my armies spring to life.
The desert sky, the night sky is alive in its loneliness
and its singularity.
My camel’s hooves, my horses plod along beneath it.
I will stretch the sky to fit even more stars.
Kahina
The sky may be one but each star is separate.
The desert may be of a single piece
but each tribe is distinct.
We have our own fire, our own spirit,
which makes us the identity we speak of when we say “we.”
And our shadow cast on the sand is noticeably our own.
They do not understand, these invaders,
thrashing through mountains, jungles, rivers, metropolises,
as if they could roll out a kingdom like a carpet.
Hasan
Starfall.
Streaks of light across the sky like the dropping of pins.
The binding loose and free.
A disturbance in the sky — indicative of
the need to bind up the empire?
Kahina
Stars fall
like slashes of light.
Heavenly swords at their war.
Even the cosmos can not avoid rebellion.
Why think we are so different, we of the desert?
Hasan
Have you no wisdom, monotonous desert?
We are holy conquerers of other lands —
why do you turn against your creator?
The stars twinkle in a glory like a tiarra
enthroning the wide knowledge of the world.
But you, oh desert! You work against me!
You cloak the heathen in a sandstorm.
You give them respite from the heat!
You enclose them around us —
as if we, we were the small sole entity
and not them!
Kahina
The fools are led by their stars
because the land is foreign to them.
And it speaks against them.
So they look heavenward,
heavenward that a cloud or storm shuts out.
But the land, the sand speaks to us:
our ear to the ground.
Our eye upon the fluctuations in the landscape —
that quick shimmer of heat, that unusual dust cloud.
Even the simple note of a single animal
scurrying down a hole.
All send us signs.
And if that were not enough,
I see their camels clopping along,
their horses thirsty and ill-prepared.
I see their uncertain routes, their backtracking,
Their mistakes are as clear as the blue sky in the afternoon.
Their future like crystal in my mind.
Hasan
“Soothsayer!”
More like “witch!”
I swear an oath, witch! by all the stars in heaven.
We will have your witch’s head.
We will make the desert give you up.
And we will bury you, your name and your line
in the cursed sands that bore you.
Kahina
Lop off my head and my name will roll upon the world
down through the centuries.
Defiance will be a seed in every Berber’s heart.
My name will rise as that seed flowers.
NOTE: Many stories, theories, legends revolve around the woman warrior of North Africa who stubbornly held off the Muslim invasion.
Bio:
Mark Fitzpatrick has had poems and stories published in Oasis, The Small Pond Magazine of Literature, Parting Gifts, Whiskey Island Review, The MacGuffin, and many more. In 1994 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has taught ESL in Brazil, Somaliland, Haiti, and Honduras.