Abdol-Baqi

 

The water that touches the seashore
Is like I who with my white cane
Tap the ground to find a way
Toward the other side of the ocean
To the land of my childhood
To Abdol-Baqi
An almost-blind well-digger who sometimes
Put on new clothes
Carried his albino twins at his bosom
And came to our house.

I stood transfixed
Watching him bat his eyelids
Under his visor
To disperse darkness.
I asked him:
“Abdol-Baqi!
When will you take me
To the bottom of the well
So that like you in darkness
I can pierce the heart of rock
And find a way toward water?”

Majid Naficy
August 31, 2017