Translated from the Arabic by Basima Bezirgan and Elizabeth Fernea Ferial J. Ghazoul Ibtisam S. Barakat
Jamilah and Us
Jamilah!* Beyond the horizon, far beyond the borders of nations, you weep.
Your hair loose, your tears soak the pillow.
Are you really crying? Does Jamilah cry?
Don’t they give you music and song
Didn’t they make offerings, of words and more words to you?
So why the tears, Jamilah?
The details of your torture were on every tongue,
And that hurt us, it was hard for our sensitive ears to bear.
You were the one imprisoned and shackled
And when you were dying for a sip of water
We marshaled all our songs
And said, “We’ll sing to you, Jamilah, through the long nights.”
All of us said: They gave you blood and fire to drink.
All of us said: They put you on the cross.
But what did we do? We sang, we praised your heroism, your glory
We said: “We’ll save her (Yes, we will)!”
We made promises, false promises, drunken promises
And we shouted “Long live Jamilah! Long live Jamilah!”
We fell in love with Jamilah’s smile.
We adored her round cheeks.
The beauty that prison had gnawed revived our love.
We were infatuated with her dimples, with the braids of her hair.
Did we not use her suffering to give meaning to our poetry?
Was that a time for songs? Songs, be ashamed.
Be silent before this noble suffering.
Their intent was evil. They cut her with sharp blades.
We gave her smiles, good intentions.
They hurt her with knives.
We, with the best of intentions, hurt her with ignorant, uncouth words.
The teeth of France tore her flesh.
She was one of us, our kin
And the wounds we inflicted are more painful to bear,
Shame on us for all the suffering of Jamilah!
Translated by Basima Bezirgan and Elizabeth Fernea
To Poetry
From the temples’ incense of bygone Babylon
From the clamor of waterwheels in southern deserts
From the nocturnal cries of a turtledove
And the echo of harvesters chanting the sunset tune
That voice, your voice, will return
To my life, to the years’ audition,
Haggard with the scent of a sad evening,
Ears of grain weighting it with graving fragrance.
It will return with a strange lyrical echo:
Frog croaks in sleepy dusk
Filling night and streams
With languid monotonous sounds.
That voice will return
To my life, to the audition of the evening.
It will return and I will hear the chanting,
Moon-fresh echoing nights of rain,
The repose of twigs
As they sip drunkenly heaven’s nectar,
Perfumed by clouds,
By visions, by greetings of the stars.
I will roam Existence
I will gather the particles of your voice from cool springs
From the mountains of the north
Where even lilies whisper songs
Where pines tell nomadic Time
Tales throbbing
With musk, tales of the shades’ passion
For the brooks, of the wolves’ chants
For the spring water in the forest shades,
Of the dignity of pastures and the philosophy of a running stream,
Of a ram in deep depression
Spending the day
Chewing grass and thoughts
Drowned in the mist of abyssal existence.
I will gather the particles of your voice from Heaven’s joys
On an ancient evening
By the Tigris, heaving with yearning,
The cheer of night revelers
Sipping water ripples
Dashing against the shore;
Summer moonlight fills the evening with images
And the breeze passes, like lips touching,
From other lands:
A Scheherazadean night
In its tender darkness
All feel and dream, even silence,
All enamored by light.
I will hear your voice when I am
Amidst Nature’s commotion, in moments of madness
When echoes of thunder evoke
A thousand legends of History’s youths
Of perished epochs and of nations no more
Of tales told by the boys of Aad
To the girls of Thamoud
And stories chanted by Scheherazade.
To that mad king
On winter nights.
I will hear your voice every evening
When light dozes off
And worries take refuge in dreams,
When desires and passions slumber, when ambition sleeps
When Life sleeps, and Time remains
Awake, sleepless
Like your voice.
In the drowsy dusk resounds your wakeful voice,
In my deep yearning
Your eternal voice that never sleeps
Remains awake with me.
I feel its painted echo filling the path
With fragrance, with colors’ dew.
Your unknown voice
I have grasped, oh joy, its honey-laced secret
I grasped—only I and the silence of the Time.
Translated by Ferial J. Ghazoul
Myths
Dedicated by the poet to Daisy Al-Amir
in commemoration of an evening at which the two
poets “philosophized even the chairs, tables, and curtains”
Life, they said
Is the eye color of the dead
The footsteps of a vigilant killer.
Its wrinkled days
Knit a coat of poison
That ceases not from killing.
Its dreams are the smiles
Of an ogress’s numbed eyes
Behind which, death stares.
Hope, they said
Is the bitterness of the thirsty
Seeing on a wall
A glass in a drawing.
It’s the frowning color
In the eyes of a bird that cried
When it found its nest sundered.
Awake with hope,
It awaited the morning
To come with a miracle
And mend the ruins.
Bliss, they said
And I searched for it in all caring eyes
In the stories of misery
Written on some people’s faces.
In time, as it is slowly devoured by the years.
In a flower, as the ghost of withering
Stalks its fragrance.
In a brilliant star
That would shine no more.
They spoke of bliss but I found no trace of it.
Has it been here but long passed?
Silence, they said
Is only a myth
Invented by an inhuman being
Whose ears can listen
While its soul in ashes lies buried.
It has not heard the screams
Streaming from the fence
Or from the paper shreds in ruins
Or the dust, or the seats in ancient places,
Or the glass dressed in cobwebs,
And a coat hung on the wall.
Youth, they said
And I inquired.
They replied there will come a time
When fog disappears.
They spoke of heaven beyond the mirage
And an oasis for the weary.
Then when I arrived at youth I found
The dreams of tomorrow
At the closed gate, crucified.
Immortality, they said
And I found it a shadow
That emerges from the shriveling of life
And flings itself in a leisurely way
On the graveyards.
I found it a word
That lingered on the lips of those
Who mourned their past
As they denied it.
They sang for immortality
As they passed. Alas!
They spoke of immortality
And I found all that is
Would not last.
Hearts, they said
And I found them no more than doors
That lead to graveyards
Where the feelings are buried
And the imagination is dead.
Their damp walls
Swallow all beauty
And beat with unbearable ugliness.
Thinking of hearts, pale, I fled.
And I shall not return.
What disappointment!
Eyes, they said
But I found eyelids
With no sight.
And I’d known lashes
That are tied to stones.
And heard of cellar eyes
That are hidden
Inside doubt curtains
Eyes that are called eyes
But to all save evil
They are blind.
And I’d known thousands of those
Whose eyes are sheets of glass
Blue as the sky
But behind the blueness bellowing darkness.
They said and said
Their chewed-up words with the wind flap
In a world of ephemeral sounds.
Those who are weary with no respite
Those who are forever lost
They spoke and I spoke
But all speaking comes to an end.
What myth! What imaginative irony!
Translated by Ferial J. Ghazoul
The Lover River
Like the unbridled wind he winds after us.
Where shall we turn?
Unconcerned
He runs through wheat land
His arms spread
In the glitter of the morning
His hands drunken
They shall meet us and take us in
And drown all our terror
No matter where we turn.
Wordlessly
He runs and runs
And conquers our towns
His brown waters
Not yielding to dams.
He is chasing us yearning
To hold our youth
In his affectionate folds
He is still chasing us
With a kind smile on his face
His feet are wet
Leaving red footprints everywhere
He has roamed East and West
Always with tenderness.
Where shall we run?
And he has slowly, firmly, and quietly
Embraced the shoulders of our town.
From his lips, mud kisses
Have covered our sad pastures.
This ancient lover we have known well
Slides endlessly toward our hills.
This familiar guest
We have built our villages as lodgings for him.
And every year he remembers
To come down the valley to meet us.
Now that he has come in the midst of night
We have vacated our huts and are departing
Knowing that he will follow us once we are under way.
For this lover we pray.
Translated by Ibtisam S. Barakat