That alone remembers its forests… the echo has a room
Like my cell here: a room for talking to oneself,
My cell is my picture I have not found around it anyone
To share my coffee with me in the morning, no seat
To share my exile in the evening, no scene
To share my amazement for reaching the path.
So let me be what the horses want in campaigns:
Either a prince
Or ruin!
And my cell has widened out into a street, two streets, and this echo
Is an echo, ominously propitiously, that I shall emerge from my wall
As a free spirit emerges from itself as master
And I shall go to Aleppo. O pigeon, fly
With my rumiyya and bear to my cousin
Greetings of the dew!
From Sky to her Sister Dreamers Pass
…and we left our childhood for the butterfly, when we left
On the steps a little olive oil, but we
Forgot to greet our mint around us, and we forgot
A swift salute to our tomorrow after us…
Noon’s ink was white, except for
The butterfly’s writing around us…
*
O butterfly, O sister of yourself, be
As you will, before my longing and after my longing.
But take me as a brother to your wing let my madness stay
With me hot! O butterfly, O mother
Of yourself, leave me not to the boxes that the craftsmen have designed
for me… leave me not!
*
From sky to her sister dreamers pass
Carrying mirrors of water, a border for the butterfly.
In our capacity to be
From sky
To her sister
dreamers pass.
*
The butterfly weaves with the needle of light
The ornament of its comedy
The butterfly is born of itself
And the butterfly dances in the fire of its tragedy
*
Half phoenix, what touches her touches us: a dark image
Between light and fire… and between two ways
No. It is not frivolous nor wisdom, our love
Thus always… thus…
From sky
To her sister
Dreamers pass…
*
The butterfly is water that longs to fly. It escapes
From the sweat of girls, and grows in the cloud
Of memories. The butterfly is not what the poem says,
From excess lightness it breaks words, as
A dream breaks dreamers…
*
Let be…
And let our tomorrow be present with us
And let our yesterday be present with us
And let our day be present
At the banquet of this day, prepared
For the butterfly’s holiday, so that dreamers may pass
From sky to her sister… in peace
*
From sky to her sister dreamers pass…
Said the Traveller to the Traveller: We Shall not Return as…
I do not know the desert,
But I grew words on its edges…
The words said what they had to say, and I passed
Like a divorced woman I passed like her broken man,
I remember only the rhythm
I hear it
And follow it
And I raise it like a dove
On the way to the sky,
The sky of my songs,
I am a son of the Syrian coast,
I inhabit it on the move or residing
Among the people of the sea,
But the mirage draws me strongly to the east
To the ancient Badu,
I water fine horses,
I feel the pulse of the alphabet in the echo,
I come back a window on two directions.
I am forgetting who I am so as to be
A community in one, and a contemporary
To the praises of foreign sailors under my windows,
And the message of warriors to their relatives:
We shall not come back as we went
We shall not came back… not even from time to time!
I do not know the desert
In the desert unseen said to me:
Write!
So I said: On the mirage is another writing
It said: Write to make the mirage green
So I said: Absence is lacking me
And I said: I have not yet learnt the words
So it said to me: Write, that you may know them
And know where you were, and where you are
And how you came, and who you will be tomorrow,
Put your name in my hand and write
That you may know who I am, and go cloud-like
Into space…
So I wrote: Who writes his story inherits
The land of words, and owns meaning totally!
I do not know the desert,
But I bid it goodbye
To the tribe east of my song: goodbye
To the race in its diversity on a sword: goodbye
To my mother’s son under his palm tree: goodbye
To the Mu’allaqa that preserved our planets: goodbye
To peace on me: between two poems:
A poem written
And another whose poet died of passion!
Am I?
Am I there… or here?
In every ‘you’ am I,
I am you, the second person, it is not banishment
That I be you. It is not banishment
That you be my I yourself. It is not banishment
That sea and desert be
Songs of traveller to traveller:
I shall not return, as I went,
And I shall not return… not even from time to time!
Rhyme for the Mu’allaqat
No one guided me to myself. I am the guide, I am the guide
To myself between sea and desert. From my language was born
On the India road between two small tribes bearing
The moon of ancient religions, and impossible peace
They must preserve the Persian neighbouring star
And the great anxiety of the Romans, so that heavy time may descend
More abundant from the Arab’s tent. Who am I? This
Is a question for others and has no answer. I am my own language,
I am a mu’allaqa… two mu’allaqas… ten, This is my language
I am my language. I am what was said by the words:
Be
My body, and so I was a body, for their rhythm. I am what
I said to the words: Be a meeting point of my body and eternal desert
Be so that I may be as I say!
There is no ground save the ground that bears me, and so my words bear me
Flying from me, and build the nest for which I am bound, before me
In my ruins, the ruins of the magic world around me.
On a breeze I stopped. The night seemed long
…this language of mine is necklaces of stars about the necks
Of lovers: they emigrated
They took the place and emigrated
They took time and emigrated
They took their scents from the pots
And the sparse grass and emigrated
They took speech and the slain heart emigrated
With them. Is the echo, this echo,
This white mirage of sound, wide enough for a name whose
Hoarseness fills the unknown and which emigration fills with divinity?
Heaven is imposing a window on me and I look: I do not
See anyone but myself…
I found myself outside it
Just as it was with me, and my
visions,
Are not far from the desert,
My steps are of wind and sand
And my world is my body and what my hand holds
I am the traveller and the road
Gods watch over me and go, and we do not prolong
Our talk of what is to come. There is no tomorrow in
This desert except what we saw yesterday,
So let me raise my mu’allaqa, so that circular time be broken
And the beautiful time be born!
No more shall the past come tomorrow
I have left for itself my self full of its present
Emigration has emptied me
Of temples. Heaven has its peoples and its wars
But I have the gazelle for spouse, the palm tree
For mu’allaqat in the book of sand. What I see is passing
A man has the kingdom of dust and its crown. So let my language conquer
Time the enemy, my descendants,
Myself, my father, and an unending extinction
This is my language and my miracle. A magic wand.
The gardens of Babylon and my obelisk, my first identity,
And my polished metal
And the Arab’s shrine in the desert,
He worships rhymes flowing like stars on his cloak
And worships what he says
Prose is inevitable then,
Divine prose is inevitable if the prophet is to conquer…
The Sparrow, As It Is, As It Is…
Ambiguity of tradition: this spilt twilight
Calls me to its agility behind the glass
Of the light. I do not often dream of you, sparrow.
Wing does not dream of wing…
And we are both anxious
*
You have what I have not: blueness is your mate
And your refuge the return of wind to wind,
So hover above me! As the spirit in me thirsts
For the spirit, and applaud the days that your feathers weave,
And abandon me if you wish
For my house, narrow as my words
*
Well it knows the roof, as a joyous guest,
Well it knows the trough of speedwell which sits, like a grandmother, in
A window… It knows where the water and the bread are,
And where the trap is set for mice…
It shakes its wings like the shawl of a woman slipping away from us,
And the blueness flies…
*
Fickle like me, this fickle celebration
Scrapes the heart and throws it on the straw,
Does any trembling remain in the silver
Vessel for one day?
And my post is void of any comedy,
You will come: sparrow, however
Narrow the earth, however wide the horizon
*
What is it that your wings take from me?
Strain, and vaporize like a reckless day,
A grain of wheat is necessary so that
The feather be free. What is it that my looking glasses
Take from you? My spirit must have
A sky, for the absolute to see it
*
You are free. And I am free. We both love
The absent. So press down so that I may rise. And rise
So than I may descend, O sparrow! Give me the bell
Of light, and I will give you the house inhabited by time.
We complete each other,
Between sky and sky,
When we part!
V.
Rain Over the
Church Tower
Helen, What Rain
I met Helen, on Tuesday
At three o’clock
The time of endless boredom
But the sound of the rain
With a woman like Helen
Is a song of travel
Rain,
What longing… longing of the sky
For itself!
Rain,
What a howling… the howling of wolves
For their kind!
Rain on the roof of dryness,
The gilded dryness in church icons,
– How far is the earth from me?
And how far is love from you?
The stranger says to the breadseller, Helen,
In a street narrow as her sock,
– No more than an utterance… and rain!
Rain hungry for trees…
Rain hungry for stone…
And the stranger says to the breadseller:
Helen Helen! Is the scent of bread now rising
From you to a balcony
In a distant land… .
To replace Homer’s sayings?
Does water rise from your shoulders
To a dried-up tree in a poem?
She says to him: What rain
What rain!
And the stranger says to Helen: I lack
A narcissus to gaze into the water,
Your water, in my body. Gaze
Helen, into the water of our dreams… you will find
The dead on your banks who sing your name:
Helen… Helen! Do not leave us
Alone as the moon
– What rain
– What rain
And the stranger says to Helen: I was fighting
In your trenches and you were not innocent of my Asian blood.
And you will not be innocent of obscure blood
In the veins of your rose. Helen!
How cruel the Greeks of that time were,
And how savage was Ulysses, who loved travel
Seeking his tale in travel!
Words that I did not say to her
I have spoken. The words I spoke
I have not spoken to Helen. But Helen knows
What the stranger does not say…
And she knows what the stranger says to a scent
Which is broken under the rain,
And she says to him:
The Trojan War did not happen
It never happened
Never…
What rain
What rain!
A Night Which Flows from the Body
Jasmine on a July night, song
Of two strangers who meet on a street
Which leads to no purpose…
Who am I after two almond eyes? The stranger says
Who am I after your banishment in me? The strange woman says.
So good let us be careful so as not to
Move the salt of the ancient seas in a remembering body…
She used to return to him a hot body,
And he used to return to her a hot body.
This is how strange lovers leave their love
Chaotically, as they leave their underclothes
Among the flowers of the sheets…
– If you really love me, make
A Song of Songs for me, and carve my name
On the trunk of a pomegranate tree in the gardens of Babylon…
–If you really love me put
My dream into my hand. And say to him, to Maryam’s son,
How did you do to us what you did to yourself,
O Lord, have we any justice that would suffice
To make us just tomorrow?
How can I be cured of the jasmine tomorrow?
How can I be cured of the jasmine tomorrow?
They sit sulky together in a shadow which spreads on
The ceiling of his room: Don’t look distracted
After my breasts – she said to him…
He said: your breasts are night that illuminate the necessary
Your breasts are a night which kisses me, and we are filled
And the place with a night which overflows the glass…
She laughs at his description. Then she laughs more
As she hides nightfall in her hand…
– My love, if it had been my l
ot
That I were a young man… it is you I would have been
– And had it been my lot that I were a girl
It is you I would have been!…
And she weeps, as is her way, when she returns
From a wine-coloured heaven: Take me
To a land where I have no blue bird
Over a willow tree, O stranger!
And she weeps, to cut through her forests in the long journey
To herself: Who am I?
Who am I after your banishment from my body?
Alas for me, and for you, and for my land
– Who am I after two almond eyes?
Show me my tomorrow!…
That is how lovers leave their farewell
Chaotically, like the scent of jasmine on the July night…
Every July the jasmine carries me to
A street, which leads to no purpose
While I continue my song:
Jasmine
On
A night
In July…
For the Gypsy, an Experienced Sky
You are leaving the air sick on the mulberry tree,
But I
Shall walk to the sea, how do I breathe
Why did you do what you did… why
Were you weary of living, O gypsy,
In the Iris quarter?
*
We have the gold you want and frivolous blood
In the races. Knock the heel of your shoe
Against the icon of being and birds come down to you. There
Are angels… and an experienced sky, so do what
You want! Break hearts as a nutcracker
And out comes the blood of steeds!
*
Your poetry has no homeland. The wind has no house. I have no
Ceiling in the chandelier of your heart.
From a smiling lilac around your night
I find my way alone through alleys as thin as hair.