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Safinah
سفينة
`Aphinar, ‘Aphinar...
Lonely name in the dreamer’s eyes
Vague as half-forgiven memory
His sheet a sail
And from the window pane
Autumn’s bleak flame
In the last grip
Regret dissolves
Leaving a trail
of dazed oblivion
Surrender is a fact
A fear no more
In the empty antechamber
of his dissolving core
`Aphinar,
Steal his last gaze!
And like the Egyptian boat
Return him to his endless Summer
At last
And to her silent Weaver.
Aphinar was the ship, that,
in Rimbaud’s testament, was meant to take him back home, to Africa.