A Pledge Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

He'd promised her the world,
of course she knew reality.
A continent away, she slept
and dreamed about the man
whose eyes had focused on
the jewel of the East, Afghanistan.

Her brother had, with a small smile
cut his own throat in bleak adversity,
the rules of desert sands were cruel
yet none would dare to stand and shout.

Allah was king and people were his sheep,
the fragrance of pure lanolin would lead
in scent and through magnetic trickery
to destiny as promised by the Gods.

The call woke him at dawn, from overseas.
She simply asked that he would come to her,
it was her life and nothing more than that,
he was still waking from his slumber, then he said:

I will be there for you as soon as things calm down,
it is our future that this deal go through on time,
we shall be rich and live in one big great hacienda
it is for you my darling that I must request your patience.

He did not come within the seven days of grace,
and nothing mattered after that, in her tradition.
No thought of riches or of beautiful haciendas
would have occurred to her, behind that cotton veil.