I
To the Prophet-ess
who turned fire
into bread,
And taught me
The wreaths of coffee
To read
Into the songs of dawn.
II
And the mason
Who showed me how
To hammer
Form out of chaos,
And love the scent
Of the cement
On new walls.
© LazharBouazzi, August 13, 2017
To my mother and father in memoriam.
My mother, Jannette, only went to a religious school, that's why she could still manage to teach me Arabic alphabet when I was only four. My dad, Al Houssein, was a small building contractor who built houses for only half of the money he deserved. I miss them so much. The following elegy, even if it is far from being what one might call a masterpiece, is not, to my mind, what one would readily call a technical loss (which means I didn't offer them anything I could lay my hands on).