Mourning the lost Kaaba

.

As sea levels rise, so also..

*

I am truly sorry to say this, but as

the globe warms, so warms the cube..

A heatwave emanating from a black stone

sweeps the desert:

will hit and kill pilgrims, is

already hitting and killing handfulls

among the millions of pilgrims

as they approach the stone,

but there will be –

I am truly sorry to say this,

may God forfend it —

there will be disasters at the stone,

hundreds, thousands dead of sheer heat exhaustion,

and the government will order

stricter controls on pilgrims,

that they be in best health,

physician verified,

that they carry much water

against dehydration,

wishing the sun itself were other

than it is, under the mercy,

where no legislation can forestall it,

attempting traffic control

against a myridad photons, light

in the niche for lights.

Pilgrimage is compulsory, thus

after the city has been shut down,

the last strays and hiders

pried from their places by special police,

some few from around the gasping

globe still will strive

with devotion

to make their way toward Mecca

and the cube on the globe,

the black stone,

some, after the last police have withdrawn,

still arriving, circling the stone,

holding tight to the thought that Ali

was born within the cube,

athirst with devotion, with dehydration

ablaze, pressing in to die

where Ali was born,

and one, one shall be the last to die there.

I grieve for that last, now,

some few decades ahead of the obvious,

to which we are oblivious —

the oncoming, blasphemous, wave.