As A Shrimp Encounters A Mermaid Poem by Harun Al Nasif

I go by the name shrimp, an aquatic insect, to say.
Yet, the dwellers of my downstream nation
bestowed upon me the esteemed rank of fish,
a token of their culinary delight.
Thus, I am profoundly indebted to them,
and offer countless thanks and gratitudes
within the divine court of the Almighty.

In this realm of water I call home,
my movements lack the fluid grace of fish,
awkward as my peculiar carcass.
Within this fish-infested domain,
reigned by a pecking order of fish,
I find myself always unwelcome.
cravng for intimacy, when I draw near,
they just approach pointing curved horns,
prompting me to retreat leaping backward,
a dance of survival I've come to know.

One day, I bump into a melancholic mermaid.
(Tracking back down the memory lane
to the sea-shore of Copenhagen.)
And I fall in love with that bizarre creature.
The poor old mermaid too, falls for me.
We strike the right chords in our minds.
Over time, we draw near to each other,
and get intimate and attentive on our own.
We delve into our company and closeness.
Our life awash with streams and waves
gets frequented by rendezvous.

I grasp her in a grip with all pairs of my limbs
clucting her in affection and emotion.
I bind her to an amour in a nonphallic embrace.

Both of us immerse in lust in a noncoital union
to indulge in ecstatic orgasm with perfect confluence.
Mingling roes and milts together we rejoice
setting us on pure fire in the womb of water.
But one fine morning, we face a big question:
Did we badly need a piece of terra firma?

One day, in an attempt to impart a lesson, in black and white,
I endeavored to teach the mute damsel how to weep shedding tears.
Out of the blue, I find myself in a terrible peril,
as if for breachng a vow to God.
An inevitable curse descended upon me:
Now, I am left with no expressions other than crying.