I cannot speak to you, because I am mute.
I cannot touch you for I do not have hands to caress you with.
My skin is beauty incarnate,
Though it is cold from years of forgetting,
And dirty from the dust of an unfamiliar land.
You do not see how I am in my soul;
My pomegranate heart, once sanguine and vital,
That would pulse like the stars,
Trembling with the yearning of love,
And the enchantment of a sacred treasure.
My head covered with the veil of the blessed moon;
Kissed by the sun upon its rising;
Oh merciful Allah sat by my side.
My Granada, my Pomegranate heart,
Supplanted by the Monkey-Lion
Who stands upon my body,
Once sensitive
And full.
Without invite,
Without care.
Without knowing what passes
Beneath its feet,
And its averted eyes.
The poetry of an age,
Where I was the only black lioness,