Three Poems From Al-Andalus

By Alan Ireland

ENNUI

Her letter

flutters lightly

in my hand.

 

Each page conveys

a sigh of sentiment,

a dissipated breeze

 

that soothes the

surface of an

ornamental pool

 

but shies away

from any gross

particularity.

 

In Tarifa at noontime,

even the hibiscus

is exhausted.

 

MADINAT- AZ ZAHRA

Alabaster roses

spring at random

from a single stem,

 

yet hiss and spit

in scrambles

for ascendancy.

 

A narcissistic fountain

plays for hours

in the twilight,

 

while in the fluted

audience hall

a dynasty implodes.

 

The postern keeper

doesn’t ask the soldiers

why they’ve come.

 

HOLOCAUST

Qurtubah’s libraries

are sacked again.

The bonfires are

ravenous for books.

 

Doors are forced for

new administrations

of uncultured clerks

and tax collectors,

 

alien historians

who find in nightly

rummaging the

requisite depravities.

 

Alan Ireland is a retired newspaper journalist in Palmerston North, New Zealand. His poems have appeared in literary magazines in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan. He is the webmaster of Islam New Zealand (http://www.islamnz.com).