Poems

My Abebà

On the hill of Haz-Haz
lived a girl from Asmara.
Alas... my beautiful Abebà,
so poised and slender;
Abebà, a flower that rhymes,
like Kohl around an eye!
So that the world may know:
while they dug her grave,
cloaked in mysterious death,
she wove an aghelghel
and sent it without hmbascià.
On an indelible night,
they handcuffed and kidnapped her!
.........................................................
Every day I feel her absence,
but I see her everywhere in the dark!
As she refuses to leave my side
bring me my Abebà’s aghelghel:
perhaps it’ll hold the answer,
the key to those handcuffs,
that now bite into me.
A single inscription on my Abebà’s
aghelghel reads ‘a souvenir for my parents’,
a flower who withered before she bloomed,
my friend in prison.