Old Passages
Ghassan Zaqtan
Suspended in memory,
only her fingers do not sleep,
riding their own dreams
beneath a dim light
—while—
a single bell rang, audible all the way to her house,
a sound rising from the hills nearby,
where the convent and the ruined buildings were.
That single bell limped at the fence
of the Muslim cemetery,
crossing the solitary genies and ghosts
who slept
by the spring that the birds frequented.
