Friend how have I bored you?
And you’ve left me
Without youth’s zeal wisdom is useless
You killed me my friend when you left me at the door of the labyrinth
Now it’s up to me alone to watch over our fate
and like a love-furious bull carry the world on my shoulders
I have to find alone an exit from the footsteps of my destiny
I have to solve the riddle Enkidu
Myself my will and my strength are yours
I will carry your life to your place
So who am I alone
surrounded by Being’s perfect nothingness?
Notwithstanding
I lean your naked shadow against a date palm
But where is your shadow?
After your trunk broke where is your shadow?
Man’s summit
is his
abyss
I was unfair when I confronted the beast in you
with a woman’s milk
Quenching you I tamed you …
and you surrendered to my humanity.
Enkidu be a friend and return to where you died
perhaps there we’ll find the answer
For who am I alone?
A lone life is missing something
and I’m missing the question
Who can I ask about the river’s passing?
So wake up my brother of salt
Carry me
When you’re sleeping do you notice?
Wake up
You’re sleeping!
Move before the wise men surround me like jackals
All is vanity
so seize your life as it is
an instant full of the demands of rising sap
Live for this day not for your dream
everything is ephemeral
Beware of tomorrow and live today in a woman who loves you
live for your body not your illusion
And wait
A child will carry your soul in your place
immortality is procreation nothing less
everything is vain or ephemeral
ephemeral or vain
Who am I?
The Song of Songs?
or the wisdom of Ecclesiastics?
You and I are me
I’m poet
and king
and a wise man at the edge of the well
No cloud in my open hand
in my temple no eleven planets
my body narrow
my eternity narrow
and my tomorrow sitting like a crown of dust on my throne
Vain vanity of vanities … vain
Everything on earth is ephemeral
The winds are north
the winds are south
The sun rises by itself and sets by itself
nothing is new
The past was yesterday
futile in futility
The temple is high
and the wheat is high
If the sky comes down it rains
and if the land rises up it’s destroyed
Anything that goes beyond its limits will become its opposite one day
And life on earth is a shadow of something we can’t see
Vain vanity of vanities … vain
Everything on earth is ephemeral
1,400 chariots
12,000 horses
Carry my gilded name from one age to another
I lived as no other poet
a king and sage
I grew old and bored with glory
I didn’t lack for anything
Is this why the more my star rose the more my anxiety grew?
So what’s Jerusalem and what’s a throne
if nothing remains forever?
There’s a time for birth
and a time for death
A time for silence
and a time for speech
A time for war
and a time for peace
and a time for time
nothing remains forever
Each river will be drunk by the sea
and the sea still is not full
Nothing remains forever
everything living will die
Nothing will remain after me except a gilded name:
“Solomon was … ”
So what do the dead do with their names?
Is it the gold
or the song of songs
or the Ecclesiastes
who will illuminate the vastness of my gloom?
Vain vanity of vanities … vain
everything on earth is ephemeral
I saw myself walking like Christ on the lake
but I came down from the cross because of my fear of heights
and I don’t preach the resurrection
All that I changed was my pace the better to hear the voice of my heart
Eagles are for bards
for me the dove’s collar
a star abandoned above the roof
and a winding alley in Akka leading to the port
nothing more or less
I want to say good morning there to the happy boy I was
Happy child I was not
But distance is a brilliant blacksmith who can forge a moon from worthless scrap
You know me?
I ask a shadow against the walls
A young girl wearing fire takes note and says:
You speaking to me?
No, I reply, I’m speaking to my double
Another Majnun Layla inspecting ruins, she mutters
and disappears into her shop at the end of the suq
It was here
we were
two date palms
relaying to the sea the messages of certain poets
Neither me nor I have grown up much
The seascape the ramparts defending our defeat
the hint of incense
announce we are still here
even if time has gone from the place
we can never be separated
So you know me? shouts the me I left
We can’t be split and we have never met
Then he ties two small waves to his arms and soars high into the sky
and I ask: which of us migrated?
I asked a jailer on the western shore: are you the son of my old jailer?
Yes indeed
Where’s your father?
He replied: Father died years ago laid low with the boredom of guarding
He left me his profession and told me to guard the town against your songs
I said: how long have you been surveying me and imprisoning yourself?
He replied: since you wrote your first one
I said: but you weren’t born yet!
He said: I have time and eternity I want to live to the rhythm of America within the walls of Jerusalem
I said: whoever you are – I’m leaving
and the me you see now isn’t me I’m just a ghost
He said: you’re an echo in a stone nothing more
that’s why you never left or stayed
that’s why you’re still in your yellowed cell
so let me get on with my work!
I said: am I still here freed or captured without knowing it?
Is the sea behind the walls my sea?
He said: you’re a prisoner, prisoner of yourself and nostalgia!
The me you see isn’t me – I am my ghost
So I say speaking to myself : I am alive
and I ask: If two ghosts meet in the desert do they share the sand
or fight for monopoly of the night?
The clock in the port ticks on
No one notices its time at night
The fishermen of the generous sea cast their nets and plait the waves
the lovers are in the discotheque
Dreamers caress sleeping larks
and dream
I said: If I died I would wake up
I have more than enough of the past
but not enough of tomorrow …
I will walk in my footsteps down the old path through the sea air
no woman will see me passing under her balcony
I have of memories only those necessary for the long journey
Days contain all they need of tomorrows
I was smaller than my eyelashes and my two dimples
So take my sleepiness
and hide me in the story of the tender evening
Hide me under one of the two date palms
and teach me poetry
So I can learn how to walk beside Homer
So I can add to the story a description of Akka
the oldest of the beautiful cities
the most beautiful of the old cities
A box of stone
where the living and dead move in the dry clay
like bees captive in a honeycomb in a hive
and each time the siege tightens
they go on a flower hunger strike
and ask the sea to indicate the emergency exit
Teach me poetry
in case a girl needs a song
for her distant beloved:
Take me to you even by force and prepare my bed in your hands
And they walked interlaced towards the echo
as though I had married a runaway fawn to a gazelle
and opened the church door for the pigeons
Teach me poetry
She who spun the wool shirt
and waits by the door
is first to speak of the horizon and despair:
The fighter hasn’t returned and won’t return
and you are not the you I was waiting for
I saw myself like Christ on the lake …
But I came down from the cross because of my fear of heights
and I don’t preach the apocalypse
all that I changed was my pace the better to hear the voice of my heart …
Eagles are for bards
for me
the dove’s collar
a star abandoned on the roof
and a winding alley leading to the port
This sea is mine
This sea air is mine
This quayside with my footsteps and sperm upon it … is mine
And the old bus station is mine
And my ghost and its master are mine
And the copper utensils and the verse of the throne
and the key are mine
And the door and the guards and bells are mine
The horseshoe flung over the ramparts is mine
All that was mine is mine
Paper scraps torn from the gospels are mine
Salt from the tears on the wall of the house are mine …
And my name mispronounced with its five horizontal letters
my name … is mine:
mim/ of lovesickness of the orphan of those who complete the past
ha/ of the garden and love, of two muddles and two losses
mim/ of the rake of the lovesick of the exile prepared for a death foretold
waw/ of farewells of the central flower of fidelity to birth wherever it may be and of a parent’s promise
dal/ of the guide of the path of tears of a studied galaxy and a sparrow who cajoles me and makes me bleed
This name is mine …
and also my friends’ wherever they may be
And my temporary body is mine
present or absent …
Two metres of this earth will be enough for now
a metre and 75 centimetres for me
and the rest for flowers in a riot of colour
who will slowly drink me
And what was mine is mine: my yesterday
and what will be in the distant tomorrow in the return of the fugitive soul
as if nothing has been
and as if nothing has been
A light wound on the arm of the absurd present
History taunting its victims
and its heroes …
throwing them a glance and passing on
This sea is mine
This sea air is mine
And my name – if I mispronounce it on my coffin – is mine
And as for me – full of all reasons for leaving –
I am not mine
I am not mine
I am not mine
The Dice Player
Who am I to say to you
what I’m saying?
I wasn’t a stone washed by water
so I became a face
I wasn’t a reed pierced by the wind
so I became a flute
I’m the way the dice fall
sometimes winning sometimes losing
I’m like you
or maybe slightly less …
I was born beside the well
where three single trees stood like nuns
I was born without ceremony or a midwife
and belonged to a family
by chance
inheriting its features, idiosyncrasies
and illnesses:
First: feeble arteries and high blood pressure
Second: shyness in talking with mother, father, grandmother – or a tree
Third: the belief that flu can be cured with a hot cup of chamomile
Fourth: a disinclination to talk about gazelles or skylarks
Fifth: a tendency to boredom on winter nights
Sixth: a farcical inability to sing
I had no say in who I was
It was by chance I turned out
male
by chance that I found the upturned moon
pale as a lemon
urging on the night
and just as easily
could find a mole hidden in the deepest recess of my groin
It’s possible
I might not have been
and my father might not have been
then he wouldn’t have married my mother
by chance
I might have been like my sister
who screamed then died and never knew it
because she lived for an hour and didn’t know her mother …
Or one could say: like a pigeon’s egg which breaks before the chick can hatch from its shell
I happened by chance
me the survivor of the bus accident
because I was late going to school
forgetting the here and now
while reading a love story at night
losing myself in story-teller and victim of love
til I became a martyr of passion in the story
and the survivor of the bus accident!
I can’t see myself joking with the sea
but I am a reckless kid
one of my hobbies is to dawdle in the waves
when they’re singing: Come to me!
And I can’t see myself being rescued from the sea
I was saved by a sort of seagull
who saw the playful waves paralyzing my hand
It’s possible
I wouldn’t have been struck with the madness of the Jahili Mu’alaqaat2
if the door of the house had faced North
and not overlooked the sea
if the army patrol hadn’t seen the fire of the villagers making bread that night
if 15 martyrs had been able to rebuild the barricades
if that rural place hadn’t been obliterated
perhaps I’d have become an olive tree
or a geography teacher
or an expert in the realm of ants
or guardian of an echo!
who am I to say to you
what I’m saying
at the door of the church
I’m nothing but the fall of the dice
landing between predator and prey
winning a
clarity that obscures my happiness on moonlit nights
and obliges me to witness the carnage
It was by chance
I escaped
I was smaller than a military target
and larger than a bee hovering between the flowers on the fence
I feared a lot for my brothers and father
feared for time made of glass
feared for my cat and my rabbit
feared for the magical moon above the high minaret of the mosque
feared for the grapes on the vine dangling like the teats of our dog
Fear walked in me and I walked in it
barefoot
forgetting my little memories or what I want from tomorrow
– there’s no time for tomorrow –
I walk, scramble, run, climb, get down, scream, bark, howl, call out, wail, speed up, slow down, love, become lighter, drier, march on, fly, see, don’t see, stumble, become yellow, green, blue, gasp, sob, thirst, get tired, struggle, fall, get up, run, forget, see, don’t see, remember, hear, look, wonder, hallucinate, mumble, yell I can’t, moan, go mad, stay, become less and more, fall, rise, collapse, bleed and faint
And by chance
with my lack of luck
the wolves disappeared from there
or we escaped the soldiers
I have no say in my life
except that I am
when life taught me its hymns
I said: do you have more?
so I lit its lantern
and it tried to oblige
I might not have been a swallow
if the wind had wanted it that way
the wind is the luck of the traveler
I went north, east and west
but the south was far and impenetrable to me
because the south is my home
So I became a metaphor of a swallow soaring above my debris
in Spring and Autumn
trying out my feathers in the clouds above the lake
scattering my greetings on my protector
who does not die
because he has God’s soul
and God is the luck of the prophet
Luckily I live next to the divinities
Unluckily
the cross is the only ladder to our tomorrow
Who am I to say to you
what I’m saying
Who am I?
It’s possible
inspiration might not have come
inspiration is the luck of the loner
this poem is a dice throw
onto a board of darkness
that glows and doesn’t glow
words fall
like feathers on sand
I don’t think it was me who wrote the poem
I just obeyed its rhythm:
the flow of feelings each affecting the next
meaning given by intuition
a trance in the echoing words
the image of myself taken from me and given to another
with no one to help me