Abboud Aljabiri
Translated from the Arabic by Muntather Alsawad and Jeffrey Clapp
The Black Garden
We killed the talks with our interpretations,
so we drew palm trees instead
in the time we had, one sterile tree after another.
We filled the spaces in between with grass.
When we found no green in the box of colors,
we watered the earth with excessive black.
Then we went home.
We didn’t wait for dates to flourish on the palms
or lovers to lounge on the new-grown grass.
And we didn’t care if people complained
daily about the black garden.