Munawwar Abdulla


Entrapped in the harvest moon

Cocooned in false silk

Reflected upon a foreign land with

False memories of a past unlived

I am alone where

No ancestor has ever been

The harvest moon whispers

Silver edges flashing a snow-capped abyss

Reflections of fire like desert dunes—

My soul is hers

Ensnared and afraid

Eternally cast in a reflection on an ocean

of a foreign island

unable to return to the Tengri Tagh

and

Tocharian plains;

No howling wolves run by wild horses

with the screech of a hunting hawk

silhouetted against that same moon

I am alone

She says:

Remember the caravans, the swirling spirits?

Remember the sweetness of honey melons

and crystal sugar tea?

Remember me? As we drank etken chai and I

sang you to sleep

while your parents in Ili

spilled blood for freedom

still just out of reach?

But she speaks to

a past life,

with knee length braids and

the breath of the Taklimakan.

I am but a shadow cast

Overseas

Escaping the imprisonment

back home yet

ensnared by the moon

Omnipresent

She tells me I am

not yet done
until I remember

what has not yet begun.

I cannot return ‘til

Home is free,

from the grips of her

calamity—

When I can emerge from

the false silk riches of

my foster home

and fly

to where my spirit keeps watch

above the Central Asian river valleys

Trapped and protected in

the harvest moon


Published in UNSWeetened Literary Journal 2017

Poetry Prize winner