Poem - My White Butterfly, I Entrust You to Perfume, Not to Gunpowder, Kareem Abdullah (Iraq)

My White Butterfly, I Entrust You to Perfume, Not to Gunpowder

KAREEM ABDULLAH (IRAQ)

My white butterfly,

this mad war shall never break

the wings of your love.

Each morning, you alight softly

upon the gardens of my soul —

like a bird soaked in music —

shaking the dust of worry

from the heart.

And in the evening,

you curl beneath my lashes,

peaceful-eyed,

as if the gunfire around us

were just a distant fable

from a time we were never born into,

a tale unworthy of us.

When the war grows fierce —

come, I’ll hide you like a charm

between my ribs.

I’ll bind you to my heart

as a prophet clasps his revelation,

and tuck you into a line

yet unwritten by bullets.

Let me entrust you to my soul —

too fragile to fight you,

too strong to betray you.

Fill the eyes with the scent of your presence,

not that damned gunpowder.

You are the blossom of vision

in a time when lovers

cross borders barefoot on coals,

only to be buried nameless

in maps that denied love.

How can any land

bully beauty

and burn the tongues of poets?

What crime is there

in writing roses,

or hiding a kiss

in the shadow of a song?

My poems are your flowers —

I water them with my tears

and name each bloom after you

with every new ripening.

They are trees,

their roots the strings of my heart,

their branches words

untouched by war.

Let us flee —

not into forests,

but into me…

into that place

where no soldier shouts,

and no shell distorts metaphor.

Let us escape

to a window

where we’ll write:

**A bird passed here,

and a woman,

and a poem…

and the world hid

between their lips.**

©®KAREEM ABDULLAH

IRAQ