It is the first evening in Ramadan

And one muezzin has outlasted the others.

He has a sweet voice filled with God: I wait

For him to become the only muezzin, the

Final singer. Because his voice is so sweet,

Like the dates and honey children will

Eat later, deep in the evening, by moonlight.

Long ago,in Anatolia, Christians got drunk on

The Sun; they made Jesus the sun the son of

God and ruler of the world. They worshiped him

As scorching heat and the power of salvation,

Who would come again as judge and burn the earth

God had created in a week of days.

They pounded grapes

And drank the hot red juice and called it his blood.

But in the desert God is not like that:

God is a palm, shade from the sun.

He is the water the Ethiopian girl offers you by

A dry roadside, the ripened mango you

Have all over your hands and can still smell

An hour after you devoured it, like a jackal.

He is the cool light of the moon in a black sky

when the sun Has disappeared,

the sun we mock with our fasting and thirst

in the moon’s good time..

We know the sun will not kill us,

that weakness will strengthen us.

That in the light of the moon we will eat

The sounds of our salvation and rise

As children until the last day, the last call

to hear the story sung again

By the sweet voice of the caller.