I do not weep for thee, |
||
My yesterday, |
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That fate hath plundered me |
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Of gorgeous majesty |
||
And glorious sway: |
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I care not for life’s dream |
||
And glory’s gleam. |
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Nor that my little tale |
Nay, it is not for this |
|
Of days is spent, |
I weep, and sigh, |
|
Resistless to prevail |
The longed-for goal of bliss |
|
When fortune did assail |
My ardent heart must miss |
|
The battlement; |
And let go by; |
|
Lo, yet my youth is bright |
Men have of life such fill |
|
With morning light. |
As God may will |
|
It is for love they flow, |
||
My bitter tears, |
||
Love’s glory, that doth glow |
||
O’er all the world I go |
||
Through all the years, |
||
Each gleaming morn. |
||
Where songbirds warble, there |
Love’s beauty ruleth, king |
|
Love echoeth; |
O’er heav’n supreme, |
|
Such fragrance soft and rare |
Magic embroidering |
|
As scenteth all the air |
Each live and living thing |
|
Is love’s sweet breath; |
In beauty’s dream; |
|
Love stirreth in its hour |
My heart, in dawn’s embrace, |
|
The fluttering flower. |
Knows the god’s grace. |
Imperious despot, insolent in strife,
Lover of ruin, enemy of life!
You mock the anguish of an impotent land
Whose people’s blood has stained your tyrant hand,
And desecrate the magic of this earth,
Sowing your thorns, to bring despair to birth.
Patience! Let not the Spring delude you now,
The morning light, the skies’ unclouded brow;
Fear gathers in the broad horizon’s murk
Where winds are rising, and deep thunders lurk;
When the weak weeps, receive him not with scum.
Who soweth thorns, shall not his flesh be torn?
Wait! Where you thought to reap the lives of men,
The flowers of hope, never to bloom again,
Where you have soaked the furrows’ heart with blood,
Drenched them with tears, until they overflowed,
A gale of flame shall suddenly consume,
A bloody torrent sweep you to your doom!
Translated by A. J. Arberry1
He sat there in his usual morning seat at the Tree Casino sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette. He was either looking at the still waters of the Nile or else upwards at the clear July sky, the color of which faded in the intense sunshine. He had some uneasy thoughts, closed his eyes to concentrate, and then opened them again. He noticed his notebook open at a white page and his pencil thrown across it at his beck and call. Looking around the rest of the of the café, he saw two people here and two others there, but they were the only ones. Even the waiter was sitting on the wall overlooking the Nile having a sort of holiday. He was the only one who came to this place to do any work; he had come on this stubborn recalcitrant July day to look for some inspiration for a new topic to fill his column Yesterday and Today in his weekly magazine. And this topic had to be something new week after week, and so it went on forever. His whole happiness depended on his success in this work, his nice apartment, his wife, his baby who was almost two years old, his Opel car, not to mention his bachelor place in the East building which was available for unforeseen requirements.
“Heavens, be generous with your ideas....”
He looked through his glasses at a palace on the other bank of the river directly opposite where he was sitting. The windows and doors were locked, and the walls gleamed brightly in the sunlight, but there was no movement anywhere; even the trees were still and looked as solid as statues.
“Oh, to live in a palace! No bother about earning a living, no worries except just thinking!”
He looked at the dregs in the bottom of his coffee cup. “I have ideas and projects,” he told himself with a sigh, “but I waste my entire life recording various observations and proposing familiar solutions to familiar problems. Ugh....”
“Professor Adham,” said a gentle voice from behind which startled him, “good morning....”
He turned round with a smile so as to hide the shock he felt and then released himself from his thoughts. “Nadra,” he said, “how nice to see you.”
They shook hands, and she sat down opposite him, putting her handbag on top of the white page. “I saw your back from the road,” she said, “and recognised you.”
“When will you recognise me from the front as well as from the back?”
“Your face is imprinted in my heart,” she replied jokingly.
All the time, he was looking at her svelte figure and face which gleamed with a spirit of youth. Even though childhood and adolescence were still close together in her life, she had make-up on her face, her eyes, eyelids, brows and lashes and nails.
“Were you on your way to or from an appointment?” he asked without bothering about her little joke.
“I don’t like morning appointments. I was dithering around in the car with no particular purpose in mind.”
No purpose! Infectious terminology! But you’re thirty-five and she’s seventeen. She is free enough to arouse the interest of any married man with a bachelor place of his own. She reads a lot and is very fond of Françoise Sagan. She had certainly surprised him on the night when he had first met her along with a group of friends in Sans Souci. She could comment on life in an extraordinary way and, when necessary, did not mind cracking a dirty joke. She had been studying scenario since abandoning her university studies; maybe she was striving for the stars. She had written several artistic pieces but, in spite of her beauty, she had failed to get them published in magazines or broadcasts. When they had last met, she had declared in the presence of some friends how much she admired atheist existentialism.
“What can I order for you?” he asked, and then carried on in a semi-serious tone, “or would you prefer us to postpone that till we go to my private apartment?”
“Order some coffee and stop dreaming....”
He offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. She started drinking the coffee without bothering about the way he was staring at her.
“How’s the existential anxiety?!” he eventually asked jokingly.
“Fine. But I only slept for two hours yesterday.”
“Thought and philosophy?”
“A row with Mother and Father as you can imagine.”
With a start he remembered the topic he was looking into seriously.
“Finish your education,” she continued, imitating her parents’ tone of voice. “Get married…don’t play around as young men do…”
A typical recording, but the girl was beautiful and the session was proving inspiring. Who knows?! However, he had to finish today’s topic even if it meant cancelling his evening appointments. “How do you expect them to understand a little philosopher like you?” he asked.
A frown warned him against proceeding any farther with that kind of joking.
“No one’s prepared to admit,” she said, “that I’m struggling to create myself, but I’m living with the People of the Cave!”
He remembered that her father had ideas more than once on television. “But your father is a man of the times,” he said.
“Man of the times!”
“Compared with my father at least.”
“Compared with the Stone Age perhaps?” she replied suppressing a laugh.
He looked into the distance as though he were dreaming.
“The Stone Age!” he said with fascination. “If only we could go back to that period just for an hour, I would carry you off on my shoulder, with no one to stop me and take you to my cave in the East Building!”
“I told you to stop dreaming,” she said. “Let me tell you why I’ve come.…”
“Oh! So we didn’t meet by chance then?”
“You know that I know that you spend every morning here writing.”
“Then let’s go to the East Building,” he said in mock seriousness, “so that we can find a suitable place to talk seriously!”
“Can’t you see I’m not joking?” she said, lighting one cigarette with another. She fixed him with her piercing eyes as pure as honey. “You promised me once,” she continued, “that you’d introduce me to Mr Ali al-Kabir.”
“Are you serious?” he asked anxiously
“Absolutely.”
“No doubt, you admire him as an actor!”
“Of course…”
They looked at each other.
“He’s forty-five!” he said.
“I know. Have you heard about the magic of time?”
“No. But I’ve heard a lot about the tragedy of time.”
“You set yourself up as some kind of moral counselor in Yesterday and Today. But here…”
“What’s my part in the story?”
“You’re his best friend.”
“He has a daughter your age.”
“That’s right. I think she’s at law school…”
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he said after thinking for a while. “Are you thinking for example of destroying his family life and then marrying him?”
“I’m not thinking of any such thing,” she replied letting out a laugh.
“Just love then?”
She shrugged her shoulders without saying anything.
“A quick way to a screen part?” he asked.
“I’m not an opportunist,” she replied disdainfully.
“Well then?!”
“You must keep your promise.”
Suddenly he had an idea. “You’ve given me the inspiration for a topic!” he shouted.
“What is it?”
“Free love, yesterday and today,” he replied after a moment’s thought.
“Tell me more.”
He felt himself impelled by an urge which he made no attempt to dislodge. “Take an example on the subject,” he said. “In olden times, when a girl went wrong, she was said to be a fallen woman; whereas now they say it’s anxiety caused by civilization or else philosophical anxiety.”
“You’re antediluvian,” she said angrily, “even though you pretend to be forward-looking.”
“What do you expect from someone whose ancestors lived in the Stone Age?”
“Can’t you look at me as a human being who’s like you in every way?”
“If you were narcissistic, yes.”
“There you are making fun of me, and my father yells at me.”
“What about you?”
“I’m still asking you to keep your promise.”
“Let me give you some idea about him first. He’s a great artist; in many people’s view, he’s the foremost film actor. He has a familiar policy which he never changes. If he’s introduced to a girl like you, he takes her straightaway to his private house near the Pyramid, and then begins where other people leave off.”
“I’m grateful for your kind of advice.”
“You still want to meet him?”
“Certainly…?”
“Fine,” he said provocatively. “But I must ask for the cost in advance!”
She moved her head to show that she did not understand. That dislodged a strand of black hair curled in a circle over her eyebrow.
“I’d like you to pay me a visit at the East Building.”
She smiled without saying anything or indeed believing he was serious.
“Agreed?”
“I’m sure your mind is cleaner than that.”
“I’m afflicted by the anxiety of the age!”
“No, no. Don’t mix jokes and serious discussion. I’ve wasted your valuable time,” she said apologetically.
She lit a third cigarette, and they looked at each other for a long while. They smiled together. He started thinking about his topic again. The atmosphere had been totally cleared of any misunderstanding, and an oppressive feeling of heat and humidity had returned.
“You’re a reactionary in trendy clothing!” she said jokingly.
“No, I’m not! You’re not being frank with yourself. But you’re really delightful, and your jokes are fun. I’ll arrange the meeting in my office at the magazine; drop in—quite by accident—on Wednesday evening at nine.”
“Thanks.”
“I owe you my thanks for next week’s article.”
“I’ll see how you deal with it.”
“When I’m writing, I become a totally different personality!”
“You stick to some preordained pattern or other which has to be followed, even if it means going against what you really feel.”
“Perhaps. The truth is that the best of me hasn’t expressed itself yet.”
When she noticed him looking at the notebook, she stopped arguing with him and put her handbag on an empty chair. He looked once more at the sleepy palace deep in its cloistered magnificence. He liked the balcony adjoining the garden and admired even more the balcony on the higher floor resting on pillars which looked like obelisks. How nice it would be to sit on that balcony in the moonlight, he thought, and be free to think without being bound by appointments and conventions; or to own a yacht and travel round on the ocean meeting people and seeing other countries with no boundaries and on condition that your wife stayed in Cairo; to play with roses in Hawaii and forget about the topics for Yesterday and Today and all the other problems like poverty, ignorance, and disease. You have a certain amount of doubt about your own talents, but these sudden outbursts keep obscuring your doubt. They are strange, staggering outbursts which ignore any idea of responsibility, unintelligible, unquestionable and uncontrollable, but commentators from taverns and hasish rings keep volunteering to explain them.
“Nadra, what do you think of the absurd?” he asked.
“Very rational!” she replied enthusiastically.
“It’s toying with me like a dream.”
“I’m thinking of writing a theatre-of-the-absurd play for the puppet theatre,” she said and then added with a sorrowful sigh, “if it weren’t for my father, I would have written a crazy story about my experiences…”
“I wish you’d include me in those experiences!” he replied, not able to control his jocularity.
“Stop joking and think of the success they deserve.”
A delightful period of contemplation ensued, and they both lost themselves in a long period of silence.
Suddenly a sharp noise rang out which made them both start at the same time, a human voice shouting, “Ho!” They saw a man tying up a boat with folded sails. It looked as though he were standing stock still, or else moving so very slowly and heavily as to be almost standing still. He was almost touching the outside of the wall just two metres away from where they were sitting and dragged the boat along with a long rope wrapped round his shoulders. Throwing himself forward, he flexed his muscles for all they were worth with great determination. The boat was moving slower than a turtle on the stagnant water in the still atmosphere. An old man wearing a gallabiyya and turban was standing in the bow and watching the other man struggle with a languid and sympathetic stare. The two of them sitting at the table no longer felt worried; anger had taken the place of anxiety, but neither of them said a word. The man carried on putting all his energy into his exhausting job till he was level with the spot where they were sitting. He was a young man in his twenties, dark-skinned, with swarthy features; he had nothing on his head or feet and was wearing a colorless gallabiyya with the top torn part open. The strain brought out all the varicose veins on his legs. His eyes bulged, his lips were taut, and he kept his back bent so as to avoid the scorching sun. Every time he felt exhausted, he would stop for a minute to take a deep breath.
“Heave ho!” the old man would yell.
“Ho!” he would yell in his turn.
His cruel struggle continued. In the minutes when he was alongside them, they could smell the stench of his body which reeked of sweat and mud. Their faces flinched, and Nadra put her delicate nose into a handkerchief impregnated with a beautiful scent. They both tried to pretend they were not disgusted and shocked as they watched the painful ordeal going on. They watched him move step by step till eventually this sharing in his task wore them both out. They turned away and looked at each other. With smiles of sympathy, each of them lit a cigarette.
Translated by Akef Abadir and Roger Allen2
A blade of grass split a stone:
is it a cock’s crow that resounded,
pierced the darkness, dragged the sun from his hair, and proclaimed
the sovereignty of day?
It is the miracle of thunder to the waste land,
to the parched lips which turned
wide open to the sky, and rain poured!
Take the soul, take the body,
take the mind, take, take
O fingers that have planted their nails
as rose bushes in my blood.
Your beloved carries the night and the sun together between his palms
and from the inside of the earth he comes
like a blade of grass splitting a stone
winged bedewed, he sprinkles
the deserts of your eyes, your hands,
O fingers that plant their nails
as fountains of love in my blood.
The breeze of the road surging at night with eyes,
sheltering strangers and prophets
in love with long sidewalks,
the breeze of the road that is heedless and roaring
descending from the house to the cave and the fountain,
ascending from the house to Golgotha,
from the bed of dreams to the Cross—
the breeze of the road, carrying the smell of dung and jasmine
of panting, death and the last laugh from beginning
and end, comes
in anger as smooth as a sleeping snake, as a
maiden of twenty kissing in the dark
a man for the first time, as a virgin with heated
breasts seeking pleasure and resisting it
swerving inveigling,
touching whispering burning
with the frenzy of flesh and blood,
uttering words that embody the spirit and drip with
fragrance on the tongue and the lips.
It is the spirit which causes ecstasy and pain. Like a mad man it
hits the corridors of the brains and the heart with its hoofs.
It is the inevitable lie, the lie whose
truth proceeds from the road beloved by prophets and
fugitives. The spirit is the road, the breeze is its whisper.
the touch of the loving breasts in the long heat of night.
The end of the trip is its beginning,
let the clocks of the city strike in vain!
Neither night now possesses its bats
nor morning threatens with coming death.
On the mountain, where the threatening Piece of Wood was set up,
the rock of water has exploded in cataracts
and the wild horses of night neighed
at the edge of the cool fountain.
A stranger in whose face are two dimples, in
whose hair is the taste of threshing-floors,
and in whose mouth is the summer of vineyards,
began dipping his feet in the flood
shouting: whose are these horses of night?
whose except the Stranger’s who turned time into circles
and kissed the crown of thorns until
the horses, the night and all the docks of the city went mad.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata3
It suffices me that I have the children of my contemporaries,
That of their love I have wine and bread.
It suffices me that from the harvest of the field
The harvest feast is enough for me.
And that I have many feasts
Whenever a new lamp is lit in the village,
But I have not carried roses to the dead
And have not cared for the wedding of slaves.
For their child is born an aged bat.
One who annihilates, revives, restores,
Undertakes to create a new child,
To wash him in oil and sulfur
From the stink of pus,
One who annihilates, revives, restores,
Undertakes to create the offspring of the eagle
Is different from the descendants of slaves.
The child does not recognize his father and mother
He does not bear the slightest resemblance to them.
Why is it that our house is split in twain
And the sea is divided between old and new?
A cry, wombs torn and veins cut
How do we remain under one roof
While seas—an obdurate wall—separate us?
When will we rise, become strong and build
Our new free home with our own hands?
They cross the bridge blithely in the morning
My ribs are stretched out as a firm bridge for them
From the caves of the East, from the swamps of the East
To the New East
My ribs are stretched out as a firm bridge for them.
“They will go and you will remain
Empty-handed, crucified, lonely
In the snowy nights while the horizon is ashes
Of fire, and the bread is dust;
You will remain with frozen tears in a sleepless night
The mail will come to you with the morning:
The news page…how often you ruminate its contents,
Scrutinize it…reread it!
They will go and you will remain
Empty-handed, crucified, lonely.”
Shut up, O owl that knocks at my chest.
What does the owl of History want of me?
I have inexhaustible treasures in my coffers:
The joy of the hands that gave,
Faith and memory.
I have embers and wine,
I have the children of my contemporaries
And of their love I have wine and bread
It suffices me that from the harvest of the field
The harvest feast is enough for me,
I am not afraid of you, O snowy resurrection day
I have embers and wine for resurrection day.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata4
Ladies and Gentlemen:
My speech was short
Because I hate that words take my time,
And my tongue
Is not a wooden sword
My words, Ladies, are of gold
My words, Gentlemen, were grapes of wrath
I am not drunk but I am tired
The candles are put out
The nights are cold
And I carry my heart in a suitcase
Like a dead child who drenched his cross with tears
Over thousands of treacheries and thousands of mean lies.
My speech was short
I am not drunk but I am mocking
My suffering
I am not Caesar:
Rome is burning
My soul is choking
Among thousands of treacheries and thousands of mean lies
So farewell
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata5
The Tatars attacked
The Tatars attacked
And played havoc with our ancient city
Our battalions returned torn in the heat of day
The black flag, the wounded, the dead caravan
The hollow drum, the humiliated footsteps, turning not backwards
A soldier’s hand knocking on the wood
A tune of hunger
The trumpet sounding, out of breath
The ground burning like fire
The horizon choked with dust
A smashed cart rolling on the road
The horses looking with defeat
Noses dripping with defeat
Eyes tearful with defeat
The ears pricked by dust
The soldiers’ arms hanging down near their feet
Their shirts wrinkled and stained with blood spots
Mothers fled behind the dark hill, horrified by the fire
By the crumbling cracks
By the Tatars’ hateful eyes staring them in the face
And their hands lustfully stretched towards their flesh
Destruction and defeat marched
Oh my city! The Tatars attacked
In the far isolated prison of the captives
The night, the wires, the guards armed to the teeth
The stupid darkness, the wounded, the odor of pus
The jest of drunken Tatar soldiers
Smacking their lips with victory
The end of a happy trip
While I embrace my defeat, sink my feet in the sand
And remember—O Mother—our long blissful evenings
And weep—O Mother—for a memory like a breeze
And old words like clouds
Mother! While you were at the foot of that hill among the runners-away
While night knotted terror under the eyelids of the
little ones. While hunger, raggy garments
The deaf, the demons and the dark squatted in the caves
Did you weep because our village is rubble?
Because memorable days are gone and will not return?
Oh Mother! We shall not perish
I hear a friend here from our good old neighborhood
I hear the cough of a crippled defeated man
And a mouth muttering threats from afar
And I, and all our comrades, Mother, swore by hatred at the close of day
That we shall cry out in the forenoon for the Tatars’ blood.
Mother! Say to the little ones:
“O little ones
We shall rummage among our dark homes when day breaks
And we shall build up what the Tatars destroyed.”
Translated by Issa J. Boullata6
O Homeland! O eagle,
Plunging through the bars of my cell,
Your fiery beak in my eyes!
All I possess in the presence of death
Is pride and fury.
I have willed that my heart be planted as a tree,
That my forehead become an abode for skylarks.
O eagle!
I am unworthy of your lofty wing,
I prefer a crown of flame.
O homeland!
We were born and raised in your wound,
And at the fruit of your trees,
To witness the birth of your daybreak.
O eagle unjustly languishing in chains,
O legendary death which once was sought,
Your fiery beak is still plunged in my eye,
Like a sword of flame.
Unworthy of your lofty wing,
All I possess in the presence of death
Is pride and fury.
Translated by Mounah A. Khouri and Hamid Algar7
So let it be.
I have to refuse death,
To burn the tears of the bleeding songs,
To denude the olive trees
Of all fake branches.
If I am singing to joy
Beyond the eyelids of frightened eyes
That is because the Storm
Promised me wine,
New toasts
And rainbows;
And because the Storm
Swept away the song of stupid birds
And artificial branches
From the trunks of standing trees.
So let it be.
I have to be proud
Of you, O wound of the city,
O tableau of lightning
In our sad nights.
The street frowns at my face
But you protect me from the shadow and grudging looks.
I shall sing to joy
Beyond the eyelids of frightened yes,
Since the Storm has blown in my homeland
And promised me wine and rainbows.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata8
Our city fled
So I ran to see its roads
I looked—I saw nothing but the horizon
I saw that the fugitives tomorrow
And those returning tomorrow
Were a body that I tore on my paper.
And I saw—the clouds were a throat
The water was walls of flame
I saw a yellow sticky thread
A thread of history hanging on to me
With which a hand that inherited
The race of puppets and the dynasty of rags
Was pulling at my days, knotting them and undoing them.
I entered the ritual of creation
In the womb of water and the virginity of trees
I saw trees trying to seduce me
Among their branches I saw rooms
Beds and windows resisting me,
I saw children to whom I read
My sand; I read to them
The chapters of “The Clouds” and the verse of “The Stone”;
I saw how they traveled with me
I saw how behind them shone
The ponds of tears and the corpse of rain.
Our city fled
What am I? An ear of corn
Weeping for a skylark
That died behind the snow and the hail
And did not reveal its letters
About me and did not write to anybody
I asked it as I saw its corpse
Lying at the edge of Time
And I shouted, “O icy silence
I am a homeland to its estrangement
I am a stranger and its tomb is my homeland.”
Our city fled
So, I saw how my foot changed into a river roaming in blood
And boats going far and growing larger
I saw that my banks were a drowning
Which tempted, and that my waves were wind and swans.
Our city fled
Rejection is a broken pearl
Whose remains settle on my ships
Rejection is a woodcutter living
On my face—gathering me and kindling me
Rejection is distances that distract me
So that I see my blood and beyond my blood.
My death talking to me and following me.
Our city fled
So I saw how my shroud shone on me
And saw—I wish death would grant me a respite.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata9
That child I was
Came to me once
An unfamiliar face
He said nothing—we walked
Each glancing in silence at each other
One step
An alien river
Flowing.
Our common origins
Brought us together
And we separated
A forest written by the earth
And told by the seasons
Child that I once was, advance,
What now brings us together?
And what have we to say to each other?
Translated by Lena Jayyusi and John Heath-Stubb10
A fire with no flames keeps our City awake at night,
Its lanes and houses have fever. When the fever goes
And sunset colors it with all the clouds it carried,
A spark is about to fly, its dead are about to rise:
“Tammuz has awakened from his muddy sleep under the grape bowers,
Tammuz has awakened, returned to green Babel to care for it.”
The drums of Babel are about to beat, but through its castles
The wind’s whistle and the moan of its sick predominate
In the chambers of Astarte
The earthenware censers remain empty with no fire.
Invocation rises as if all the throats of the reeds
In the swamps were crying:
“Panting with exhaustion,
The goddess of blood returns, the bread of Babel, the sun of March.
We roam aimlessly like strangers from house to house,
Asking for her gifts.
Hungry are we. Alas! Her hands are empty,
Her eyes are harsh
And cold as gold.
We spent year after year after year watching
Thunderous, lightning clouds with no rain
And winds like storms which neither pass as a storm
Nor lie quiet-we sleep and wake up in fear of them.
O gods looking with no compassion:
Your eyes are stones which we feel out in the dark
Pelting us with no grudge,
Turning like slow millstones chewing our eyelids until we are inured to them.
Your eyes are stones as if they were the bricks of a wall
That we built with our hands, with what hands do not
build. Our virgins are sad and listless around Astarte
As water dries up bit by bit in-her face,
And branch after branch the vine withers.
Slow is our death inching its way between light and darkness,
What a lion it is, woe to it, from whose wide jaws we suffer.
Is there lightning fire or a temple flame in its eyes?
Are there two censers kindled for Astarte in its eyes?
Or are they two windows of the kingdom of the Dark World
Where yearly the saviour bears his burning wound,
The wound of the rotating world,
And yearly returns to redeem it and brings flowers
And rain-his hand awakening us with a wound?
But years have passed, so many we have not counted them,
With no rain-not even a drop,
With no flowers-not even one flower.
With no fruits: as if our barren palms were idols we erected
So that we might wither and die under them.
Our lord has forsaken us
Ah, for his tomb!
Is there not in your muddy bottom one jar
In which there are remains of the lord’s blood, or a seed?
His little gardens we ate yesterday when we hungered;
We stole from the ants’ homes, from their granaries, millet and oats
And impurities which we had sowed.
We kept our vow—but he did not.”
The little ones of Babel walked carrying cactus baskets
And fruits of earthenware as offerings for Astarte.
Like a shadow of water, plant and fire
A shimmer of lightning lights
Their little round faces as they pray for rain
A field of blossoms is about to open up as they shine.
And like a thousand butterflies scattered on the horizon,
Their little hymn rises softly:
“Our brothers’ tombs call us.
Our hands are groping for You.
For fear fills our hearts, the winds of March
Rock our cradles and scare us. The voices call us.
Hungry are we, trembling in the darkness,
Looking in the night for a hand that will feed us and cover us,
To whose bare arm our searching eyes can firmly cling.
In the darkness we look for You, for two breasts, for a nipple.
O You whose bosom is the great horizon and whose breast is the cloud:
You have heard our sob and seen how we die—give us then to drink!
We are dying while You—alas—are hard and merciless.
O fathers of ours, who will redeem us? Who will revive us?
Who will die, who will offer his flesh as a banquet to us?”
The sky lit up with lightning as if a lily of fire
Was opening itself up over Babel. Our valley shone,
And incandescence penetrated the bottom of our land and bared it
With all its seeds, its roots and its dead:
Beyond the walls that Babel built around its fever
And its thirsty earth, beyond its pillars and its ramparts,
Clouds burst in rain which would have satiated it, but for these walls.
In an eternity of listening between one thunder and the next,
We heard—not the rustle of palms under torrential rains
Or the whispers of winds under wet trees—
But the sound of footsteps and hands,
A chuckle and an “Ah!” of a little girl who with her right hand
Caught a moon fluttering about like a butterfly, or seized a star,
A gift from the cloud,
A shiver of water, a drop which a breeze whispered
So that we know that Babel will be cleansed of its sins.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata11
Your eyes are two palm tree forests in early light
Or two balconies from which the moonlight recedes.
When they smile, your eyes, the vines put forth their leaves,
And lights dance… like moons in a river
Rippled by the blade of an oar at the break of day;
As if stars were throbbing in the depths of them…
And they drown in a mist of sorrow translucent
Like the sea stroked by the hand of nightfall;
The warmth of winter is in it, the shudder of autumn,
And death and birth, darkness and light;
A sobbing flares up to tremble in my soul
And a savage elation embracing the sky,
Frenzy of a child frightened by the moon.
It is as if archways of mist drank the clouds
And drop by drop dissolved in the rain…
As if children snickered in the vineyard bowers,
The song of the rain
Rippled the silence of birds in the trees…
Drop, drop, the rain…
Drip…
Drop…the rain…
Evening yawned, from low clouds
Heavy tears are streaming still.
It is as if a child before sleep were rambling on
About his mother (a year ago he went to wake her, did not find her,
Then was told, for he kept asking,
“after tomorrow, she’ll come back again…”)
that she must come back again,
yet his playmates whisper that she is there
in the hillside, sleeping her death for ever,
eating the earth around her, drinking the rain;
as if a forlorn fisherman gathering nets
cursed the waters and fate
and scattered a song at moonset,
drip, drop, the rain…
drip, drop, the rain…
Do you know what sorrow the rain can inspire?
Do you know how gutters weep when it pours down?
Do you know how lost a solitary person feels in the rain?
Endless, like spilt blood, like hungry people, like love,
Like children, like the dead, endless the rain.
Your two eyes take me wandering with the rain,
Lightnings from across the Gulf sweep the shores of Iraq
With stars and shells,
As if a dawn were about to break from them,
But night pulls over them a coverlet of blood.
I cry out to the Gulf: “O Gulf,
Giver of pearls, shells and death!”
And the echo replies,
As if lamenting:
“O Gulf,
giver of shells and death…”
I can almost hear Iraq husbanding the thunder,
Storing lightning in the mountains and plains,
So that if the seal were broken by men
The winds would leave in the valley not a trace of Thamud.
Hear the villages moaning and emigrants
With oar and sail fighting the Gulf
Winds of storm and thunder, singing
“Rain…rain…
drip, drop, the rain…”
and there is hunger in Iraq,
the harvest time scatters the grain in it,
that crows and locusts may gobble their fill,
granaries and stones grind on and on,
mills turn in the fields, with them men turning…
drip, drop, the rain…
drip…
drop…
when came the night for leaving, how many tears we shed,
we made the rain a pretext, not wishing to be blamed
drip, drop, the rain…
drip, drop, the rain…
since we had been children, the sky
would be clouded in wintertime,
and down would pour the rain,
and every year when earth turned green the hunger struck us.
Not a year has passed without hunger in Iraq.
Rain…
Drip, drop, the rain…
Drip, drop…
In every drop of rain
A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers,
Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people,
Every spilt drop of slaves’ blood,
Is a smile aimed at a new dawn,
A nipple turning rosy in an infant’s lips,
In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life.
Drip, drop, the rain…
Drip…
Drop…the rain…
Iraq will blossom one day in the rain.
I cry out to the Gulf: “O Gulf,
Giver of pearls, shells and death!”
The echo replies
As if lamenting:
“O Gulf,
Giver of shells and death.”
And across the sands from among its lavish gifts
The Gulf scatters fuming froth and shells
And the skeletons of miserable drowned emigrants
Who drank death forever
From the depths of the Gulf, from the ground of its silence,
And in Iraq a thousand serpents drink the nectar
From a flower the Euphrates has nourished with dew.
I hear the echo
Ringing in the Gulf:
“Rain…
Drip, drop, the rain…
Drip, drop.”
In every drop of rain
A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers.
Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people
And every spilt drop of slaves’ blood
Is a smile aimed at a new dawn,
A nipple turning rosy in an infant’s lips
In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life.
And still the rain pours down.
Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Christopher Middleton12
I knew Ibrahim, my dear neighbor, for
A long time. He was a well whose water overflowed
But people
Passed by and did not drink from it, nor did they
Throw even a stone in it.
“If I could spread my brow
On the mast of light again,”
Says Ibrahim on a small piece of paper
Stained with his unavenged blood, “will the brook,
I wonder, divert its course? Will the boughs bud
Or the fruits form in autumn,
Will plants grow on the rocks?
“If I could,
If I could die and live
Again, will the sky soften its face
So that eagles do not tear the long train
Of victims in the desert? Will factories laugh,
With smoke? Will noise stop in the fields,
In great boulevards? Will the poor man eat
His daily bread by the sweat of his brow,
By the sweat of his brow not the tears of humiliation?
“If I could spread my brow
On the mast of light,
If I could live for ever,
Will Ulysses return, I wonder?
Will the prodigal son, will the Lamb?
Will the sinner stricken with blindness
So that he can see the Way?”
When the enemy aimed the cannon of death
And soldiers charged under a shower
Of bullets and death,
Someone shouted at them, “Retreat, Retreat.
In the shelter at the rear there is a place
Safe from bullets and death.”
But Ibrahim kept advancing,
Onwards advancing,
His little chest filling space.
“Retreat. Retreat.
In the shelter at the rear there is a place
Safe from bullets and death.”
But Ibrahim kept advancing
As if he heard no echo.
Some said it was madness.
Perhaps madness it was.
But I knew my dear neighbor for a long time,
I knew him since childhood
A well whose water overflowed,
But people
Passed by and did not drink from it, nor did they
Throw even a stone in it.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata13
Mistress
Should these enamored words chance to meet your eyes
Or pass between your lips
Then forgive me; it was your eyes
In whose shade one evening I leaned resting
And snatched brief slumber
In their repose I caressed the stars and moon
I wove a boat of fancy out of petals
And laid down my tired soul
Gave to drink my thirsty lip
Quenched my eye’s desire
Mistress
When we met by chance as strangers meet
My sorrow too was walking on the road,
Bare, unveiled
With heavy tread
You were my sorrow
Sadness and loss
Silence and regret
Were embracing a poet consumed by struggle
For poetry, mistress, is a stranger in my land
Killed by emptiness and void
My spirit trembled when I saw you
I felt suddenly as if a dagger delved into my blood
Cleansed my heart, my mouth
Prostrated me with soiled brow and supplicating hands
In the shade of your sweet eyes
Mistress
If suddenly we meet
If my eyes see those your eyes
High-set, green, drowned in mist and rain
If on the road by another chance we meet
And what is chance but fate?
Then would I kiss the road, kiss it twice
Translated by Mounah A. Khouri and Hamid Algar14
When the night sets up its trellis of twigs
On the city streets
And sprinkles its deep sorrow on them,
You see them quietly resigned
Staring at the cracks
And so you think they are submissive
But-they are on fire!
When the dark builds up
On the city streets
Its marble statues
Which it ungratefully destroys,
And when its spiral stairs
Take creatures downwards
To a deep remote past,
And when its amber shores
Are drowned in memories
Almost never to awake,
And when in every soul rises a wall
Of clay, diamonds, and desires
And the night becomes sleepy
And a day rises as lamps in array
Are set against the darkness,
The blood of tranquility becomes
As dry as tombs
And the heart of the city becomes
Like a despicable thing
Like a stove in midday heat
Like a lamp in a blind man’s way
Like Africa in the dark ages:
An old woman shrouded in incense
A pit for a bonfire
An owl’s beak
A beast’s horn
An amulet with an ancient prayer
A night with many mirrors
A dance of naked blacks
Singing in black joy
In absence of sins
Worried by their master’s lust
And by ships laden with comely slave-girls,
Musk, ivory, saffron,
Gifts without festivities
Driven by the wind at every moment
To the white man of this age
Master of every age.
A plantation extends in the world of imagination
Clothing the naked, undressing the nude
Its gloom running in the veins of life
Coloring the waters
Dyeing the face of God
Its sorrows being a laugh on the lips
Growing even tyrants
Even slaves
Even iron
Even fetters
Growing something new every day.
But when the dark builds up
On the city streets
Barriers of black stone
They stretch out their hands in silence
To the balconies of the morrow
Their cries imprisoned
Their land imprisoned
Their days being wounded memories
Of a wounded land
Their faces, like their hands, sad
You see them quietly resigned
Staring at the cracks
And so you think they are submissive
But—they are on fire!
Translated by Issa J. Boullata15
The night asks who am I?
I am its secret—anxious, black, profound
I am its rebellious silence
I have veiled my nature, with silence,
wrapped my heart in doubt
and, solemn, remained here
gazing, while the ages ask me,
who am I?
The wind asks who am I?
I am its confused spirit, whom time has disowned
I, like it, never resting
continue to travel without end
continue to pass without pause
Should we reach a bend
we would think it the end of our suffering
and then—void
Time asks who am I?
I, like it, am a giant, embracing centuries
I return and grant them resurrection
I create the distant past
From the charm of pleasant hope
And I return to bury it
to fashion for myself a new yesterday
whose tomorrow is ice.
The self asks who am I?
I, like it, am bewildered, gazing into shadows
Nothing gives me peace
I continue asking—and the answer
will remain veiled by a mirage
I will keep thinking it has come close
but when I reach it—it has dissolved,
died, disappeared.
Translated by Mounah A. Khouri and Hamid Algar16
1
It gives our nights sorrow and pain;
It fills our eyes with sleeplessness.
We found in it our way,
One rainy morning
And gave it, out of love,
A stroke of pity and a little corner
In our throbbing heart.
It never left or vanished from our way,
Stalking us to the corners of the world.
If only we gave it no drop to drink,
That sad morning!
It gives our night sorrow and pain;
It fills our eyes with sleeplessness.
2
Why does this pain come to us?
Where does it come from?
From old it has dwelled in our dreams
And nurtured our rhymes.
For we are a thirsting mouth
By which, thriving, we are satisfied.
At last, we dragged it to the lake,
Shattered it and scattered it to the waves,
Leaving neither a sigh nor a tear,
Thinking it would no longer afflict our smiles with grief
Or hide the bitter wails behind our songs.
Then we received a lovely scented rose,
Sent by loved ones from across the seas
What were we expecting from it?
Joy and happy contentment.
But it shook and began to flow with tears
Over our sad tuned fingers.
O pain, we love you!
Why does this pain come to us?
Where does it come from?
From old it has dwelled in our dreams
And nurtured our rhymes.
For we are a thirsting mouth
By which, thriving, we are satisfied.
3
Can we not conquer pain,
postpone it to another day,
keep it busy one evening,
divert it with a game, a song,
a forgotten ancient tale?
What can it be, this pain?
A tender, little child with searching eyes,
Quietened by a gentle, kind touch
And put to sleep with a smile and a lullaby.
O you who gave us our regrets and tears,
Who else but you closed his heart to our grief
Then came to us in tears, asking for refuge,
Who but you bestowed the wounds with smiles?
Child, most innocent of tyrants,
Loving foe or mortal friend,
A stab asking us to offer our cheeks,
Without a qualm and without a pang of pain.
Child, we have forgiven that hand and mouth
That dig trenches for tears in our eyes
And reopen the wound…
Yes, we have forgiven the sin, the damage, long ago.
4
How do we forget pain,
How do we forget pain?
Who will light for us
The night of its memory?
We shall eat it, we shall drink it,
We shall pursue it with songs,
And if we sleep, its shape
Will be the last thing we see.
And in the morning, its face
will be the first thing we discern,
and we shall bear it with us
wherever our desires and wounds take us.
We shall allow it to raise walls
Between our longing and the moon
Our anguish and the cooling stream,
Our eyes and our sight.
We shall allow it to afflict our eyes
with sorrow and distress,
and we shall shelter it
among the ribs of our joyful songs.
At last, it will be swept down the river,
and will be buried under the cactus,
and the forgetfulness will descend on our valley.
Good evening, sadness!
We shall forget pain,
we shall forget it,
having nurtured it with satisfaction.
Beloved pain,
we deified you in the drowsiness of dawn
bowed our heads at your silvery altar
burned the seeds of sesame and flax
offered sacrifices
sang verses to Babylonian tunes.
We built for you a temple with strange walls
And anointed the ground with oil, pure wine,
And burning tears.
We burned for you fires with leaves of palm
And stalks of wheat and our grief,
With closed lips, on a long night.
We sang and called and made our offerings:
dates from intoxicated Babylon
and bread and wine
and cheerful roses.
Then we prayed to your eyes
And offered a sacrifice,
And we gathered the bitter teardrops
And made a rosary.
O you who bestow on us our music and our songs,
O tears that lead to wisdom,
O fountain of all thought, fertile abundance,
O cruel tenderness, merciful punishment,
We have hidden you in our dreams,
In every note of our sad songs.
Stay as you are, a secret world
Modern Arabic Literature 387
Not such thing as a soul discerns
Spinner of poems, the last muse
In a world whose mirrors are dimmed
What song did not flow with honey
If you were to smile your praise upon it?
Why do we fear words?
Some words are secret bells, the echoes
of their tone announce the start of a magic
And abundant time
Steeped in feeling and life,
So why should we fear words?
Translated by Nathalie Handal17
A whisper is a sibilant thing
Sliding from the throat
Straight to the ear
An intimate thing
I’d say to a sister.
A whisper provides
An access into
Boundless caverns
Echoing myself.
A whisper breaks
Narcissus’ reflection
Of himself. A whisper
Is Echo’s words.
This time, they are heard.
Translated by Nathalie Handal18
I
The ringing burst loud and frightening
Then that voice persistent and sad:
“Send your aid eastwards
All your uncles have become refugees.”
I heaved a deep sigh and grieved sorely over them
Then I sent my uncles clothes
Which I had piled up for beggars
Raisins which if had but we would not eat
Sticky piasters with no bright sheen or ringing jingle
And tears and tears and tears and a groan.
Since that day I gave my piasters to no beggar
For my cousins had become refugees.
II
My uncle hungered and we lamented his hunger
Then we fed him for a month as a guest
And rested from the pangs of conscience
We then gave him up to the great wide world
And got absorbed in our own worlds.
“Many a dove calling in the forenoon” stirred our sadness
And we remembered him and plunged in tears
And rested from the pangs of conscience.
Who frightened away the white-legged horses from their hills?
Who toppled down their riders?
Who feeds them in their nakedness?
Who knows the green summits?
A strong noble people was living there then…went astray
III
Then we met—my cousin and I
I shouted to him, “My cousin, ‘the apple of my eye,’
O noble man, I am still loyal to the fond memories
How much we loved each other as youngsters
and competed with the near star.
And wandered up green summits, and in the fertile meadow
(We had no idea how fertile it was)
We were sad at the sun’s escape behind the horizon
Before we finished all we had to say.
A fragrance still clings to my heart of the fig leaves that shaded us.
You were a world of bloom: the sun and heaps of wishes
Were your sweet hope, your faith, your yearning and I…
Do tell me something new about you and I will
tell you something about my life
About my dream, my ambition, my thoughts and travels
Hey, what? Why are you turning away from me, distracted
Impatient? Are you not my cousin, O noble man?”
He said to me with indifference, “No, a stranger” and he disappeared.
Memories died at his heels…and we vanished
Farewell, stranger.
In spite of death, he was my cousin
We had lived together on our land
My cousin was the prime
Of all the young men of our town
What made him freeze?
He was no dead man, I know him
For we set up our wishes together
And worshipped the birth of fire in us
We opened up our selves to a great desire
We grew up knowing the bitter hatred as of custom
We held fingers together
We demonstrated with the large crowds
And shouted with the fullness of the heart’s faith
With the fullness of echoing expanse
“O Britain, do not overdo it
Do not say: ‘Conquest is pleasant’
Nights will come to you
Whose lights are shining spears.”
“O Britain? Those who died are dead. Lie down, O Spears.”
Olive trees did not bear oil and fire
The color of their leaves faded
The morning breeze did not convey to us a desire, a stimulus
It embraced the strangers with its yearning
IV
I asked the land and the sea about them
The paleness of dawn, the sad night.
A star with an extinguished eye led me to them
And the traces of boxthorn carried from their valleys.
For they feared to die in their homeland
In order to live as refugees.
I came to the old man to quench my eagerness
He used to cherish me, babble to me, sing to me as a child
“My town is high…on the top of a hill
O my dear little girl…O jasmine bud.”
He taught me old poetry,
The principles of religion (Ah for his despair!) and the Qur’an.
He used to protect me from my angry father
From my own unruliness.
Who can touch the jasmine while the old man is around!
A little girl with her grandfather can never have enough of his love.
She leans her head against his gentle chest
And he gives her the warmth of his heart.
I said, “Grandfather, peace and guidance.”
I said, “Grandfather, we seek your satisfaction.”
I said, “Grandfather, don’t you know my voice?
Has it not made an echo while remembering you?”
My grandfather said, “Get up and leave us.
Our ears are heavy with deafness
The echo is a wound in the depths of the heart
I would have returned your bitter call
If I could speak. Get up and leave us
You do not understand the meaning of silence in a broken heart.”
He used to cherish me, to babble to me, to sing to me
as a child My town is high…on the top of a hill
My town is high…on the top of a hill
My town is…The echo is a wound in the depth of the heart
My town…is high...on the top...of a hill
The call to prayer rose high
But my grandfather’s heart is distracted and cannot hear it
A baby cried and cried too much
Having lost her who kissed his tears dry.
My uncle shouted, “Silence that sick baby
Ask our neighbor to suckle him
His pregnant mother nursed him little and he is lean
I shall not burn my days for him.”
O my sweet one, my dear...O jasmine bud
Silence that sick baby!
O my sweet one, my dear...O jasmine...bud.
V
Pale lips do not approach prayer at dawn
Pale lips do not know the purity of kisses
They do not kiss today except their lust
And though their feverish passion bears fruit
Pale lips do not kiss naked children
Born without roots, without a morrow,
From a passion that has no love;
O sons of the dead, are you dead like them
Or are you orphans? Or the scar of a wound in a sad people?
We are all that…
A word of a hoarse discordant tone united us “Refugees”.
Translated by Issa J. Boullata19
I thought the war was…
Here we died, Mai and I,
Flattened by armored wheels
While you were fooling around
In the Casbah…
I found my children’s broken bodies
Lying in the streets and picked them up,
I swam over my head in nightmare,
Then yanked off my skin,
Hung it over the flame to dry
And once more I almost dreamed
In their dream.
I flew, crawled, hid—
I heard the wind crying:
“Salma…Salma
they’ve bought and sold you”
thousand snakes—a blazing coil
around my heart.
And you were fooling around
In the Casbah,
Weren’t you,
When our nation became
War’s killing ground?
Translated by Charles Doria20
Did I do it
Step over the line?
Yes
Do my lovers know
How I prayed God
I would
Stretching
Beyond Sky
To shatter wall
After wall
In my way?
Scrapping limits
I crossed to a world
Where lovers never sleep
They are so far gone
Into each other
Leaping fences
I abandoned my sleepy fountain
Where I loved and drowsed
Completely
Quiet and content.
I found fire’s seed and entered
Watching the innocence in my dreams
Die
Hipocritic standing guard
Eager to become my tyrant
High noon sun blaze
I pass the impassable
Desire ending my journey
Deserting the twilit world herded
Gulled by the shadows
Even moss casts
On the walls that hem me in
Spotlight I can’t get out of
I won’t strip for you
Reveal myself
I love dark corners
With their wrap-around night
I love staying home nights
With one I love
To be strange
The stranger at the crowd’s heart
No Salma there’s no turning back
Harden now your tired heart
And push on
You completely the creature
Of noon-day sun
Where you were before is chasm now
Column of salt, body nailed to the gibbet
Going bare discloses
Loving heart’s courage
Eyes ahead go on the way you came
Humble road’s steepest
Walking up the stairs of hell
When you’re there
At your feet a spring
Gushes free of the rock
Poem to my son
I am an April woman:
December ash that consumes itself
Frightens me
My son, hide me while you rocket to the stars
Spreading over the earth like grass
Winter thunderstorm will drink down
My river flowing with love’s secrets,
Muffling that music in whose echoes
You were born
But you shrug your shoulders:
“this woman is planted in time
she bridges the air like a dove
a thousand years old.
She is a willow, I know her:
Bend her—she springs back
She is a palm tree, I know her
Pick her fruit—she makes more
Honey and dates
She is a cypress tree, I know her
She never loses her leaves
What do December storms mean to her?”
Yet the winter winds do howl, my son,
Night and day I yearn for you
For your sweet sarcastic voice
Your voice wise and cruel, innocent and selfish.
Night and day I miss you
We both live in space, in the wind and the rain
Each of us drinks his own wine
Each of us is poured in his own glass
For you were made of my elements.
I gave you:
My impetuous soul
My constant disappearance
Flitting far away across the world
My chronic elusiveness
A will like rock, loyal
As true stars
In the sky’s valleys.
And I gave you:
Love’s ecstasy
The will to conquer
Passionate devotion
And the enchantment of the spirit
In the presence of holy fire.
Should I blame you?
And you gave me:
A promise and a pledge
Security forever delayed
Love that’s here and is never here
Should you blame me?
I am a wild gazelle
You are a rock
My head is bloodied.
Translated by Charles Doria21
In our hands is a fresh yearning for you,
In our eyes songs of praise and unique melodies,
Into your hand as choral offerings we will thrust them.
O you who emerge as a sweet fountain of hope,
O you who are rich with promise and desire.
What is in store for us that you hold?
What have you got?
~
give us love, for with love the treasures of bounty within us burst forth…
with love our songs will grow green and will flower
and will spring with gifts
riches
fertility.
~
give us love, so we may build the collapsed universe within us
anew
and restore
the joy of fertility to our barren world.
~
give us wings to open the horizons of ascent,
to break free from our confined cavern, the solitude
of iron walls.
Give us light, to pierce the deepest darkness
And with the strength of its brilliant flow
We will push our steps to a precipice
From which to reap life’s victories.
Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye22
The nightingale mourned in the glade for his mate,
And his grief wrung tears from the blossoms’ eyes;
Sorrow surging importunate
Chosed his bosom with burning sighs.
Who hushed the singer, and wrapped him round
In silence, the silence of the tomb?
What runed his rapture to gloom profound,
That he shuns the nest, and the birds in the bloom?
When his brother dear he no longer viewed,
And no more captured his warbled note,
On a tender thorn-twig the mourner stood
And stretched to the skies his supple throat;
His yearning anthem throbbed in the dell,
And the boughs of the thorn-bush shook with pain
As forlornly he bade the mead farewell,
And the singer he would not find again.
In the still of night, and a world at rest,
Save the traveler glad in the stars’ pale shine,
Grieving my heart for thee made quest,
Searching, and finding never a sign:
Yet with echoing grief, and refrain of sighs,
Weeping I make my poesy
Of the beat of my heart, and my tear-bright eyes,
Till the riders of death shall silence me.
Translated by A.J. Arberry23
That evening
Faces faded around us
The room was drowned in fog
Nothing lived
But the shining blue of your eyes
And the call in the shining blue
Where my heart
Sailed, a ship
Driven by the tide
The tide carried
Us onto a sea
Without shores
Stretching
Limitless current
And flow
Waves telling the endless
Story of life
Now abridged in one glance
And the earth drowned in the rushing
Flood of winds and rain
That evening
My garden awoke
The fingers of the wind
Unhinged its fences
Grasses swayed, flowers bursting,
Fruits ripening
In the blissful dance of wind and rain
Faces faded, all else was a fog
That evening
Nothing existed
But the blue shining light in your eyes
And the call in the shining blue
Where my heart sailed
Like a ship driven by the tide.
Translated by Patricia Alanah Byrne24
In this the moment of departure,
Point your red arrows,
Disarm the lightening, and open wide
The gate to my exile.
Close the sky’s open face, and ride away.
I long so deeply that the shores unfold their seas
And horses bolt!
Hooves have trampled my heart a thousand times,
A thousand waves have broken over it!
Now I’ll carry the roads and palm trees in my suitcase,
I’ll lock my tears in the evening’s copybooks
And seal the seasons.
Let’s begin our song: here is Beirut wearing you
Like her own clothes.
You must sit well on the surface of her glory
Abandoning tears
In her blue froth
She contains you like eternity
Like the sense of beginning that comes with certainty
—How can you be dead, yet so absolutely present?
Let the rivers abandon their sources,
The winds abandon their skies,
And the seas dry out!
Everything in the universe has an end
Except my spilled blood…
Each time I think of it
You remain as large as your death.
The war planes choose you, discover you, plant
Their blackness in you.
From all those clouded last visions,
How will you begin the story of harvest?
War planes select you,
At the start of your sleep,
At the end of your sleep.
How often did the sky explode over you
With hatred?
How often were you taken aside?
How many massacres did you survive?
Now you collect all the wounds, taking refuge with
Death,
Wearing dreams as wings.
Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye25
When the full moon is born in the East
And the white rooftops go to sleep,
Beneath waves of light that are deep…
People leave their shops and in throngs move forth
To meet the moon
And to the mountaintops carry bread…a radio…
and their opiates.
There they sell and buy fantasies of the mind
And images,
And they die when the moon comes to life.
What does a disc full of light do
To my land?
The land of prophets
The land of simple folk,
Those who chew tobacco and are drug merchants
What does the moon do to us,
That we lose our pride
And live to beg from heaven?
What can heaven offer
The lazy and the weak?
Those who turn into dead corpses when the moon comes to life
And shake the tombs of saints
In the hope that these tombs may bestow upon them some rice, some children
Their beautiful and elegant carpets they spread out
And console themselves with an opium that we call Fate and Destiny
In my land, the land of simple folk.
How weakness and dissolution
Afflicts us when the light shines forth!
The carpets and the thousand baskets,
Glasses of Tea and Children all over the hills.
In my land,
Where the naïve weep
And live in the light they do not see;
In my land
Where people live without eyes
Where the naïve weep
And pray
And fornicate,
And in resignation continue to survive,
As they always have lived in resignation,
Calling on the crescent moon:
“O Crescent Moon!
O Fountainhead gushing forth, raining diamonds,
Hashish and drowsiness!
O suspended God of marble!
O Incredible object!
For the East, for me, you have always remained
A cluster of diamonds,
For the many millions who have been rendered senseless.”
In those nights in the East when
The full moon shines forth
The East relinquishes all honour
And ability to defend itself
For the millions who run barefoot
Who believe in having four wives,
And in the day of judgement.
The millions who find their bread
Only in their dreams;
The millions that spend the night in houses
Built of coughs
Who have never known what medicine is
And fall down dead beneath the light.
In my land,
Where the stupid shed tears
And perish weeping,
Whenever they see the crescent moon
Their weeping intensifies
Whenever a lowly lute touches their hearts…
or they hear the song “of the Night”
Which in the East we call
Songs “of the Night”
In my land
In the land of simple folk
Where we ruminate endlessly the night songs
A form of consumption decimating the East;
Our East that ruminates its own history,
Its languid dreams,
Its hollow legends;
Our East that seeks to discover every heroic deed
In some fanciful tale of Abu Zayd al-Hilali.
Translated by Suheil Bushrui26
Between us
Twenty years of age
Between your lips and my lips
When they meet and stay
The years collapse
The glass of a whole life shatters.
The day I met you I tore up
All my maps
All my prophecies
Like an Arab stallion I smelled the rain
Of you
Before it wet me
Heard the pulse of your voice
Before you spoke
Undid your hair with my hands
Before you had braided it
There is nothing I can do
Nothing you can do
What can the wound do
With the knife on the way to it?
Your eyes are like a night of rain
In which ships are sinking
And all I wrote is forgotten
In mirrors there is no memory.
God how is it that we surrender
To love giving it the keys to our city
Carrying candles to it and incense
Falling down at its feet asking
To be forgiven
Why do we look for it and endure
All that it does to us
All that it does to us?
Woman in whose voice
Silver and wine mingle
In the rains
From the mirrors of your knees
The day begins its journey
Life puts out to sea
I knew when I said
I love you
There was no inventing a new alphabet
For a city where no one could read
That I was saying my poems
In an empty theater
And pouring my wine
For those who could not taste it.
When God gave you to me
I felt that he had loaded
Everything my way
And unsaid all His sacred books.
Who are you
Woman entering my life like a dagger
Mild as the eyes of a rabbit
Soft as the skin of a plum
Pure as strings of jasmine
Innocent as children’s bibs
And devouring like words?
Your love threw me down
In a land of wonder
It ambushed me like the scent
Of a woman stepping into an elevator
It surprised me
In a coffee bar
Sitting over a poem
I forgot the poem
It surprised me
Reading the lines in my palm
I forgot my palm
It dropped on me like a blind deaf wildfowl
Its feathers became tangled with mine
Its cries were twisted with mine
It surprised me
As I sat on my suitcase
Waiting for the train of days
I forgot the dates
I traveled with you
To the land of wonder
Your image is engraved
On the face of my watch
It is engraved on each of the hands
It is etched on the weeks
Months years
My time is no longer time
It is you
Translated by Lena Jayyusi and W.S. Merwin
When a man is in love
How can he use old words?
Should a woman
Desiring a lover
Lie down with
Grammarians and linguist?
I said nothing
To the woman I loved
But gathered
Love’s adjectives into a suitcase
And fled from all languages.
Translated by Diana Der Hovanessian and Lena Jayyusi
I remember…growing up and her streets of light
I remember…staying up with her all night
I remember…she was the beloved of the poets
I remember…how they thronged around her!
My city—
They said the celebration would not last
Your marriage feast was interrupted
Your wedding dress stained with blood
But you stood firm
Your youthful form filled with vigor
Rage entered all the houses
Bursting out from blood-shot eyes
And showers of lead lashed and scourged us
After long, long years
The bouquet of flowers still remains
In the hands of the bride wearing the stained dress
And still—
Blazing fires are etched against the Beirut sky
Ominous rumbling fills her head
Fear lurks in her silent streets
Children draw bomb shelters on the sky of their notebooks
And a tear trickles down the face of God.
Translated by Suheil Bushrui29
Do you think Palm trees dream?
What resides in their minds?
Do you think the Palms of Texas yearn for the Palms of Baghdad?
Which ones departed? Which migrated?
Are they twins, carrying between them a long mirror
Reflecting the character of the West, reflecting the face of the East;
Searching for a magical thread that links the far corners with each other?
Do you think the Palm chants in solemn Silence
Words about the similarities in the mirror?
Do you think they whisper to the Earth in solemn Silence
Do not lose Hope?
Perhaps this is what makes the Earth a bead in the rosary of a dervish
that is eternally spinning,
Spinning invisible threads that link the caravans of humanity.
Translated by Z. al-Faqih30
All I possess in my shattered
Days of exile:
Are gifts of patience and ashes of love;
Fragments of old tales and dreams aborted;
Withered aspirations, and ferocious longing gnawing at my heart
Daily at eventide.
These are my treasures, O my foreign friends—
Treasures to be rifled or stolen,
All laid out at the edge of time in summer or winter.
None is there to guard my treasures,
None is there to steal them.
I wonder then, my impoverished friends,
Who would be tempted to steal from a poet’s treasure?
Translated by Suheil Bushrui31
This is the now “I am”! Forgive who I was before I met you.
Do not lash me with a past you were not in
I began to be and was born the day we met
It was a promising future that led me to you!
Sustain it then, and mould me anew.
You have been the reward of life…My life deserved
To be rewarded since you came into it.
Wrapped in your contentment and from it I receive
My bliss in full sufficiency.
Many a life has passed until you learnt
To love me so tenderly
With a mother’s contentment you embrace my fate
And with a new breath flows my utterance.
You are what you are! Tempestuous! Defiant!
Madly in love, turbulent! Shaking all my being and scared away
But the burden of your absence weighs heavily in my heart
Touches me like a storm and when I meet you
I am overcome by timidity.
Translated by Suheil Bushrui32