“El Aql Zeena: زينة العقل.
Meaning: The mind is what makes a being beautiful.”

-Arabic Proverb

The mind is a decoration.
Which is to say,
Your dreams are ruptured winds against mortal fate.

The Caliph watched aturab bathe
Madinat Al-Salam as he stands among the rocks
Overlooking, Nahr Dijla.

He wonders of the sky and if the angels
Drown in beds of stars as
He would in this great river.

You must forgive the winds—
Because without them you cannot
See these planets. They receive

The last of of humanity—
Soul and star join for judgement

Jupiter rises fil leela as
Saturn passes through Burj Al-Qawsee
The Caliph thinks of his son, the Archer

Now free from this human condition
How his arms became wings and the soldiers
Watched him become partridge and take flight.

When he returns to The House of Wisdom
He checks for signs of the Chukar who
Hovers over his son’s old books.

The guards warn him of an uprising of the sick
To cure “The King’s Evil” one must
Drink the blood of a royal.

It is in his Burj that the Lycan’s sickness
Overcomes the Caliph, until he can no longer drink
No longer remember his humanity.

Mouth foaming he waits
For the owl’s hoot, an omen
That his consciousness will transfer to another.

As his body begins to shift,
Arms curving into wing
Mouth becomes beak.

He can join his son among the stars
And once again dream of paradise.