I’m a pajama Iraqi, my wife’s a Romanian gal
and our daughter is the thief of Baghdad.
My mother still boils the Euphrates and the Tigris,
my sister has learned how to make piroshki
from her Russian mother-in-law.
Our friend, a knife Moroccan, stabs an English
steel fork into a fish born on Norwegian shores.
All of us are workers sacked from the scaffoldings
of the tower we wanted to build in Babel.
All of us are rusty spears
that Don Quixote threw at the windmills.
All of us are still shooting at dazzling stars
a moment before they are swallowed up
into the Milky Way.
Translated by Vivian Eden