The Seed (shouted)

By Yusuf Abdalwadud Adams

The seed was planted
With the best of intentions
On the site of the Tower of Babel
Before any person questioned one single tongue
But yet grew stone by stone
To dare to think it could threaten
The start

For it is a garden within which
We broke apart
Myriad tongued and multiple
Yet one

Not before raising up a
Single city to pierce realms
Did we come to be scattered
Yet still
The garden ran with us

Humankind
Dwelt on the earth and learned to behave
Like water on a leaf when we desired to so be

What was first planted grew and it was a delight
Dwellings rose and lay or hung among the greener
desert slopes
Nothing was then built upon
No land was scraped flat nor river diverted
Until the beauty shone too bright
Art and Science soared

Only then did we pierce the earth
Such screaming beauty was made
With this earth’s blood my dear beloved friends,

Digging down to build our great foundations and
systems of irrigation
The ease of our prowess in survival became the
cyclones of waste
Pouring down
Then to find
Drilling deeper
Divinely finite
Black life blood

For which death is the price
Yet no one knew
Throats ever thirsty while eyes hungered for the
completion of
The city’s roaring spasm of technical transcendence
So much energy diverted into this single spire
Hewn from aether and fire
While the gifts of the garden lay waiting
Eternally Patient

By Yusuf Abdalwadud Adams, in A Kaleidoscope of Stories: Muslim Voices in Contemporary Poetry (Lote Tree Press, 2020) www.lotetreepress.com