And lightning burst across the sky, like a lily of fire,
Opening above Babylon, lighting the valley.
A spark shot through our land,
Laying bare its seed and root and its dead.
And clouds poured down rain upon rain. Were it not for the city walls, the waters would have quenched our thirst.
In the eternity between one thunderbolt and the next,
We heard not the rustle of wet wind through the palms,
But the clamor of hands and feet,
A murmur, the sigh of a girl seizing a moth-like moon, or a star, in her hand.
Seizing the tremor of water, of a raindrop in which whispered the breeze
To tell us that the sins of Babylon will be washed clean.
BADR SHAKIR AL-SAYYAB