Naked of protectors
Knew neither my grandfather nor his sons
Who stand now around the ‘Nūn’
In the Surrat ‘al-Rahman’.
O God… So bear witness!
*
He was one born of himself
Buried alive, near the fire,
In himself,
So let him grant to the phoenix of his burnt
Secret what it needs after him
To light the lanterns in the temple
*
In the olive groves, east of the springs
Grandfather has withdrawn into his lonely shadow.
The sun does not rise on his shadow.
On his shadow, no shadow falls
And Grandfather forever, is far away…
Houriyyah’s Teachings
I
One day I thought of travelling, and a goldfinch settled on
Her hand and fell asleep. It was enough that I caress a branch of a vineyard
In haste… for her to understand that my wine glass
Was full. Enough that I go to bed early for her to see
My dream clearly, and spend her night watching over it…
Enough that a letter come from me for her to know that
My address had changed, above the corridors of prisons, and that
My days circled around her… and about her
II
My mother counts my twenty fingers and toes from afar.
She combs my hair in the golden strand of her own hair. She seeks
In my underwear for foreign women,
She darns my torn socks. I did not grow up at her hand
As we wished: I and she, we parted company at the slope
Of the marble… clouds signalled to us, and to a goat
That will inherit the place. Exile has set up for us two Languages:
A spoken… so that the dove can understand it and preserve the memory
And a formal language… so that I can interpret her shadow to the shadows!
III
I live still in your ocean. You did not say what
A mother says to her sick child. I was sick from the brass moon
On the tents of the Badu. Do you remember
The road we took when we fled to Lebanon, where you forgot me:
And forgot the bread-bag (it was wheaten bread).
And I did not shout so as not to waken the guards.
The scent of dew put me on your shoulders. O gazelle who lost
There her home and her mate…
IV
Around you there was no time for sentimental talk.
You kneaded all the noontide with basil. You baked
The cockscomb for the sumac. I know what ruins your heart, pierced
By the peacock, since you were driven a second time from Paradise.
Our whole world has changed, our voices have changed. Even
Our greeting to each other dropped off like a button on sand,
Making no sound. Say: Good morning!
Say anything to me so that life may be kind to me.
V
She is Hagar’s sister. Her maternal sister. She weeps
With the reed pipes the dead who have not died. There are no graves around
Her tent to show how the sky opened up, and she does not
See the desert behind my fingers: so as to see her garden
on the face of the mirage, old time hurries her on
To an inevitable futility: her father flew like
A Circassian on the marriage steed. But her mother
Prepared, without tears, for her husband’s wife,
Her henna, and checked out her anklets…
VI
We only meet to take our leave of each other when our talk converges.
She says to me, for instance: Marry any woman,
So long as she is foreign, more beautiful than the local girls. But, do not
Trust any woman but me. Do not always trust
Your memories. Do not burn to enlighten your mother,
That is her honourable trade. Do not long for the promises
Of dew. Be realistic as the sky. Do not long
For your grandfather’s black cloak, or your grandmother’s
Many bribes, be as free in the world as a foal.
Be who you are, where you are. Carry
Only the burden of your heart… Come back when
Your land has widened into the land, and has changed its conditions…
VII
My mother lights the last stars of Canaan
Around my looking glass,
And throws into my last poem her shawl!
Ivory Combs
From the fortress the clouds drift down, blue,
Onto the alleyways…
The silk shawl flies
And the flock of pigeons flies
And on the face of the water of the pool the sky moves a little and flies.
And the sea eats its bread, bread of Acre
And polishes its seal, as it has for five thousand years
And throws its cheek against its cheek
Ritual of long, long marriage
*
The poem says:
Let us wait
Until the window comes down
Over ‘the album’ of this tour guide
*
I enter by way of her stone armpit, as
A wave enters eternity, I cross
The centuries as if crossing from room to room
I see in myself the familiar contents of time:
A Canaanite girl’s looking glass,
Combs of ivory,
An Assyrian soup bowl,
The sword of the man who guarded his Persian master’s sleep,
The sudden leap of falcons from one flag to another
Over the masts of fleets…
*
If I had another present
I might own the keys of my yesterday
And if my yesterday were here
I might own all of my tomorrow…
*
Obscure is my progress up the long alleyway
Leading to an obscure moon over the copper market.
Here a palm tree relieves me of the load of the tower,
And thought of songs carries simple tools
Around me, to make a recurrent tragedy, and imagination
A starving pedlar, roaming comfortably over the dust,
As if I were unconcerned with what would happen
To me at Julius Caesar’s festivities… before long!
I and my beloved are drinking
The water of happiness
From one cloud
And falling into one jar!
*
I disembarked at her port, nothing except
That my mother lost her kerchiefs here…
No tale for me here. I change
Gods or negotiate with other gods. No tale for me here
That I should burden my memory with barley
And names of her guards who stand at my shoulder
Waiting for the dawn of Tuthmosis. I have no sword,
No tale for me here that I should divorce the mother who
Gave me her kerchiefs to carry, each a cloud, a cloud over
The old part of Acre… on departure!
*
Other things will happen,
Henri will deceive
Qalawun, after a while
Clouds will rise red above the serried date palms…
Phases of Anat
Poetry is our stairway to a moon which Anat hangs
Over her garden, like a looking glass for lovers without hope, and she wanders
Over the wilderness of herself, two women unreconciled:
There is a woman who can turn water back to its spring.
And a woman who sets fire to forests,
As for steeds
Let them dance for long over two abysses.
No death there… and no life.
My poem is froth of a gasping man, the scream of an animal
At its climbing up
And at its naked fall: Anat!
I want both of you together, love and war, Anat
And to Hell with me… I love you, Anat!
And Anat is killing herself
In herself
And for herself
And recreates space so that creatures can pass
In front of her distant picture over Mesopotamia
Over Syria. All directions are conform
About the sceptre of lapis lazuli and the seal of the virgin: Do not
Delay in this lower world. Come back from there
To nature and natures, Anat!
The water of the well dried up after you, valleys dried up,
The rivers dried up after your death. Tears
Evaporated from a pottery jar, and the air snapped
From dryness like a piece of wood. We broke like the fence
On your departure. Desires dried up in us. Prayer
Has been calcified. Nothing lives after your death. Life
Dies, like words between two travelling to hell,
O Anat
Tarry no longer in the lower world! Perhaps
New goddesses have come down to us because of your going away
And we have become subject to the mirage, perhaps the cunning shepherds
Have found a goddess, near the dust, and priestesses have believed in her
So come back, and bring back, bring back the land of truth
And allusion
The land of Canaan, the origin.
The common land of your breasts,
The common land of your thighs
so that miracles may return
To Jericho,
At the door of the abandoned temple… No
Death there and no life
Chaos at the door of judgement. No tomorrow
Comes. No past comes to say goodbye.
No memories
Fly from the direction of Babylon above our palm tree, no
Dream entertains us, so as to appease a star
Which is a button of your dress, O Anat
And Anat creates herself
From herself
And for herself
And flies after the Greek ships,
Under another name,
Two women who will never be reconciled…
And the steeds,
Let them dance long over two abysses. No
Death there and no life
There I neither live nor die
Neither does Anat
Neither does Anat!
The Death of the Phoenix
In the songs we sing
Is a reed pipe,
In the reed pipe which lives in us
Is fire,
And in the fire we kindle
Is a green phoenix,
And in the phoenix’s dirge I do not know
My ashes from your dust
A cloud of lilac is enough
To hide
The hunter’s tent from us. So walk
On the water, like the Lord – she said to me:
There is no desert in the memory I have of you
And no enemies from now on for the rose
That bursts forth from the ruins of your house!
*
There was water like a ring around
The high mountain. Tiberias was
A back yard of the first garden,
And I said: The image of the world
Is completed in a pair of green eyes
She said: My prince and my prisoner
Put my wines in your jars
*
The two strangers who burned in us
Are those
Who wanted to kill us a short while ago
And are those
Who are returning to their swords after a short while
And are those
Who say to us: Who are you two?
We are shadows of what we were here, two names
for the wheat which sprouts in the bread of battles
*
I do not want to retreat now, as
The Crusaders retreated from me, I am
All this silence between the two sides: the gods
On one side,
And those who created their names
On the other side,
I am the shadow which walks on water
I am the witness and the spectacle
The worshipper and the temple
In the land of my siege and your siege
*
Be my love between two wars on the looking glass –
She said – I do not want to retreat now to
My father’s fort… Take me to your vineyard and unite me
With your mother, perfume me with basil-water, sprinkle me
On the silver vessels, comb me, and bring me into
The prison of your name, kill me with love,
Marry me, and marry me to the traditions of farming,
Train me to play the reed pipe, and burn me so that I may be born,
Like the phoenix, from my fire and your fire!
*
There was something like the phoenix
Weeping blood,
Before it fell in the water,
Near to the hunter’s tent…
What is the point of my waiting or your waiting?
IV.
A Room for Talking
to the Self
Poetic Steps
The Stars had no role,
But to
Teach me to read:
I have a language in the sky
And on earth I have a language
Who am I? Who am I?
*
I do not want the answer here
Perhaps a star has fallen on its picture
Perhaps the top of the chestnut has taken me up
Towards the galaxy by night,
And said: Here you shall stay!
*
The poem is far above, and is able
To teach me what it wants
How to open the window
And manage my domestic affairs
Among the legends. It is able
To marry me itself… for a time
*
My father is downstairs, carrying an olive tree
A thousand years old,
Neither Eastern
Nor Western.
Sometimes he rests from the conquerors.
And is affectionate towards me
And gathers the iris for me
*
The poem is far from me,
And enters the port of sailors who love wine
And who never return twice to a woman,
And who have no longing for anything
And no worries!
*
I have not yet died of love
But a mother who sees the glances of her son
In the carnation and fears the damage of the vase,
Then weeps to avert an accident
Before the accident has happened
Then weeps to bring me back from the road of the traps
Alive, to live here
*
The poem is betwixt and between, and is able
To illuminate nights with a girl’s breasts,
And it is able to illuminate with an apple two bodies,
And it is able to bring back,
With the cry of a gardenia, a homeland!
*
The poem is in front of me, and is able
To set in motion the matters of legend,
By hand, but I,
Since I found the poem, have exiled myself
And have asked it:
Who am I
Who am I?
From the Rumiyyat of Abu Firas al-Hamadani
&n
bsp; An echo returns. A wide street in the echo
Steps interspersed with the sound of coughing,
They are nearing the door, gradually, then moving away
From the door. There are people who are visiting us
Tomorrow, Thursday is for visits. There is our shadow
In the passageway, and our sun in the baskets
Of fruit. There is a mother scolding our jailers:
Why have you poured our coffee on the grass.
You wretch? And there is the salt-scent of sea,
There is a sea that breathes salt. My cell
Has widened by a centimetre for the sound of the pigeon: Fly
To Aleppo, pigeon, fly with my rumiyya
Bearing my greetings to my cousin!
An echo
Of the echo. The echo has a metal ladder, transparency, moisture
That fills with those who go up it to their dawn… and those
Who come down to their graves through the holes in space…
Take me with you to my language! I said:
What benefits people is what dwells on the words of the poem,
While drums float like foam on their skins
And my cell has widened, in the echo, to became a balcony
Like the dress of the girl who accompanied me in vain
To the balconies of the train, and who said: My father
Does not like you. My mother likes you. So beware of Sodom tomorrow
And do not expect me, Thursday morning, I do not
Like the density when it conceals me in its prison
The movements of meaning and leave me a body