UAE Unfettered

Time stands still momentarily, impatiently,
Outside the walls of the desert city
And crys a peacefully sad mourning
To the cooling desert evening breeze.

Her voice carries
To the alert flicking ears
Of the tiger of Yemen.
He knows time’s mourning song
And his brown eyes blaze.

Flickering once, they focus now
On the end of the winding grey cable
Of progress, snaking its way
In the distance
Upwards and around Hafeet.

Times swoops and snatches smoothly
The tiger's soul is borne up
By respectful talons
Graceful dazzling falcon
Spreads its wings

Rides the inevitable current up.
Yes. Time it is, shape-shifted now
From and to and to and from
It's fateful winged hurtling heritage.

Upwards, upwards, up & up,
With one tiger's soul, claw-borne
Gently to the peak.
Presents his etched transparancy
To the desert there.

Sun rays warm the visible and invisible passages that meander
About and through the post-flight folding up of time's winged form.
Sun rays warm the visible and invisible passages that meander
About and through the transparent complexity of a bodiless tiger's soul.

The sun sets on time alighted there.
The sun sets on the tiger's soul there.

And the intensity of reflected
Desert evening heat
On the edge of Winter
Answers time's cry.
"We mourne our father's soul"

The father of the desert,
The tiger of Yemen,
Is resting at time’s feet
At the peak of Hafeet.

Time waits for no man.
The tiger of Yemen’s soul knows
In the desert,
Time too waits for no tiger.




"Thus we play the fools with time; and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us"
Henry IV, Act ii, Sc.2