A Pool With Turtles

From The New Yorker, September 5, 1988.

A Pool With Turtles
by Ben Sara of Santaren
Arabo-Analdusian poems, ninth-thirteenth centuries

Eyelashes thick
And a pupil
Among flowers
The secluded pool
How beautiful

With turtles in it
How they leap
In fun and pop up
Clad
Moss green

Squabble
For places at
The pool's rim
But come winter
Plunge deep

Down and stay
All hidden
At any time
When they are playing
Watch them flip

And peer around
For all the world
Like Christian
Soldiers with
Shouldered shields