for Riad Saleh Hussein and Saleh Al-Razzouq

I was dreaming of a river and fish,

Of flying along its surface with my thumb

Carving a small wake. I thought it was cinematic,

That dream, but when I woke

I heard the noise of the street.

What am I doing writing about film, I thought?

Living as if in a story about myself,

Like an autodidact awake to its own possibilities?

I can hear nothing, so I do not speak.

I live inside the airy chamber of my art.

This is what keeps me going,

That and the long road to justice

From which I will never depart.

I wove my paints into words like patterns.

They carry sound without being it.

The carry bodies with them,

Bodies I have known rushing out of a bombed river,

Layering a drainage ditch as if sketched there.

What in the name of the almighty

Are we doing with destruction, with its silence

Made by distance? I have this art,

Which is the only door, the sole voice inside

My head, the cocoon of silent wishes

Asking the world for its name.

*Scott Minar: Poet, song writer and professor of English Literature at Ohio University, Lancaster.