OK, you get a break now.
So two poems.
In this poem, I'm writing 'alams.
'Alams are tiny North African--
not really, no, it's Libyan really, Libyan and Western
Egyptian Bedouin type of song.
And they're tiny, tiny songs.
And what you hear in the 'alam performance
is the 'alam singer singing one of these lines after another.
They echo each other.
And so that's one part.
But also I'm combining this into a [? mawwāl, ?] which is
the unaccompanied melodic singing that an Arab singer
must do.
He can take a line of poetry and just plays with it
and sings it.
The musicians can then--
they kind of echo his voice.
So this is 'alam and [? mawwāl. ?] And
it's "'Alams for Cairo."
Cairo is, of course, the cultural hub of the Middle
East, has been one of the cultures at least,
the center was.
But it is also a city under really a terrible dictatorship,
which has given the go ahead to continue as it is.
So "'Alams for Cairo Nights."
And this also is a salute to Cairo.
They employ some words from the great singer Umm Kulthum.
And it's all lyric love alams.
"You chose love, spun a world into love.
You chose love, wove a world into love.
When you're with me, I can't bear to blink.
When you're with me, I can't yield to close my eyes,
I can't bear the absence, not even for a second,
the absence of your arms disarmed.
I can't wallow behind my lids.
This is how bad I can't bear.
I can't bear such waste.
This is how much, this is how hard, this is how much,
this is how dark it gets.
This is how much a word not said to no one else.
With a word, a word like this love,
a word so much can be said, a word
unsaid in tenderness, a word like you.
A word like the word love, where are they,
your likes to be found?
Where can one look?
A word answers nowhere to be found.
I hear it, a love that burns--
never burned out, but it burns.
A song that says my heart still burns,
I hear it like a song that says and stays my love doesn't end.
I want to talk to you in all the ways I don't talk,
in a way that's open in secret and talk.
I want to talk to you in the ways I don't talk even
in secret, a way that opens in secret, our secret, our love,
a kind of music.
We try to catch up with words.
We try to catch with words our love when our secret tries
to catch its words.
With words of love, a kind of music
we try to catch with our hands that
plays our hearts with a word that burns, a word like you,
a word I can't talk, where in secret
is caught, a word where love is, where
love tries to catch its words and where love is caught.
Ends up sounding like Gertrude Stein, too, so.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] Gertrude Stein, and [? I'm ?] [? cool, ?] too.
Who knew?
OK.