I swallow the blood of
Ahura Mazda, then
I spit out a Latin ghost
a name gargled in an iron ink
and with a mouthful of salt
with a throat split-open on
the winding
    silk    road
both god-heavy; gold-drunk,
         (O philosopher of dust)
and with ether breath,
and with dates in hand
Gerard of Cremona
sits inside the majlis.
A tongue laid in a furnace
and a breath of smoke
an unbound book awakens
claiming to be son of Sina.
The Vulgate of my grandmother
only watches introspectively.
                 (who pulls fire, from the
                                  palm of God?)
To the man of Cremona,
“Avicenna,” I say,
“you know of him?”
and the bones beneath him shift,
“Yes,” he replies.
“A great physician.”
      But a great Persian too?
            but a great Arab too
                  but a great Muslim too
but a great MOOR too!
 
And the graves shift beneath him again—
A mortar dust, with papyrus in the teeth of
a cruel predator, a big lion,
           maybe the antithesis of St. George’s Dragon
                  something wicked to Sina's son/holy to
                              the man of Cremona
pulled through a crucible is his name,
filigreed in ash, is his name
From the limbic monstrosity of Persia
and torn from its ligament-tiles
laden in barbarism and black-horned ewes,
my Avicenna adopted into the tongues of monks
heretic hiding in their draped vestments!
At Al-Qiyyama apostate I am shall fall with him,
not son of Sina; with Avicenna
            the Latin ghost
and with palms upturned,
rajul-min-Cremona catches the ember
that which falls from God’s hand
and that which falls from Zoroaster’s fire.
Yet my fall of self-exile
of abandonment of bad Muhammad
yet his fall of Westernhood imposed
yet his fall of Empires imposed

And the graves shift beneath him again—
The votarists
            whom I bless
That press his name into vellum,
and burn the edges with his flame
and hold his hooked nose to candlelight
and call him Avicenna all the same
and say, our Avicenna
              “Our Avicenna.”
            (who owns the breath
                         of the dead?)
The Church put his bones
On brass scales.
I go to Mass and I pray
and I see him embalmed
and I see my people
slaughtered
and I pray still,
all the traitor,
    And Gerard of Cremona
           sits amongst them all in the pew.
           He burns me like sand.
                                       (do they know of sand?)