The Stars Fall On Yemen Poem by Ralph Vaughan

The djinns are restless in their sandy beds
And fitful in their blue-lit mountain grottoes;
But the always-insomniac urban djinns,
Swilling too-strong coffee and smoking black russian cigarettes,
Are the first to hear the falling stars hit the cobbled roads
And pale sandstone towers of ancient cities
Dreaming they are in the twenty-first century;
How the djinns tremble, how they yearn for the old pagan way,
The simple carefree god- and demon-filled paradisiacal day
Before the mad and murderous prophet began to bay
About a fanged and blood-lusting god, submit and slay;
Or even had they been adopted by the god of the mount,
For even to the supernal beings who throve before the rising of the sun
Surely he would yet be gentle, ever the good shepherd,
Making them the least of the angels, or the most minor of demons;
There would then be no yankee lunatic in the hills
Shouting for death and murder and endless warfare,
No new mexican crazed killer whose electronic voice shrills
For eagle’s blood, for the blood of lambs from his mountain lair;
And then a sleepy peace might settle on the slow southern sands,
With no need for iron behemoths to ply the arabian sea
And send shooting stars that fall upon yemeni lands,
Disturbing sleeping djinns who dream the dreams found in opiate tea.