Translated by Aabdulwahed Muhammed
1
At forty years old
At the fortieth year
I sat at the door of dreaming
The dream was as lean as a lost rendezvous
As good as Bedouin fire
The playing cards were showing its picture
With or without a crown
In a formal uniform or with ‘iqal* on head
I became aware of its silence
I wept for its pearly delicacy
2
At the fortieth shout
I said:
O! Dream
Whose picture is shown by the playing cards
On the right and the left
On the left and the right
How much we have missed your kindness
How much we have missed your riding
The horses and the evenings
And asking after us we the undated letter
And the futureless letters
And the content that leads us ferociously to the death arena.
3
On the fortieth night
My shout fell down
I collected its fragmented glass by my wounded tongues
The shout was drawn
The shout was childish like water
I said:
You whose thin picture is shown by time cards
Up and down
Down and up
How do I deplore your royal forehead?
I was the one who made the tragedy by my blood
And took the flight from the faked lion that disturbed me.
4
In the fortieth treasure
The suns shrank and everything vanished
The river Tigris was not drawn with ink
Nor with blood
Nor with anything
As if Tigris had never existed
I wondered of my disappointment
And of the confusion of my tales
But your treasure – treasure of history – is more wonderful
And your tale – tale of the depressed – is more complete
5
At the fortieth stab
I sat near your tree: the fig tree
I said to it:
O! Tree of the one whose picture is shown by trees
Time and again
I am now near you in the capitals of hunger
I pray God to make you fruitful
So that I may be satiated
And to supply you with water
So that I may satisfy my thirst
And to invoke you to write
So that I may write my song for the dream
The dream whose picture is shown by dust
As good as a lost rendezvous
As lean as a Bedouin fire
6
At the fortieth door
The dream had no interest in my shouts and death-rattles
Nor in my nudity and loss
The dream was over there …
Without his queens
Without his butlers and retinue
Without his guards, throne and gold
Without any of those who carry out his orders
The dream was over there …
Lying dead
Like a letter falling out of a dumb mouth
Like a love rendezvous torn by knives
like a good fire which dogs make water on.
..............
‘iqal: a double-folded felt rope usually worn on head by Arabs
(1)
Whenever I want to drink from the glass
The glass of poison
As Socrates did
I remember you
And I throw the glass away
(2)
Whenever I want to travel throughout the Heaven
As Dante did
Or to have my brother and myself lost
As Joseph’s brothers did
Or to enter the fire
As Abraham did
I remember you
And I stop traveling
Loss
And fire
(3)
All right, then
If you take me back to life
All right ……
But what is the solution
When death, my faithful friend,
Does not stop Knocking at my door?
Tell him
With the innocence of your heart
Not to come back
Ere we meet
On the peak of letter Mountain
Or in exile
Or in legend
(4)
All right, then
For me to resume practicing my role
In the drama of the lost humanity
A drama that continued from Babylon to Baghdad
To Beirut, Berlin and London
Then surely ended in hell.
All right, then
To resume practicing my role
As your father
But I cannot talk well to you
Since your alphabet is of six thousand
Years old
Nor can I dance well with you
For my white and red blood cells
Have been exhausted by oppression and captivation
Nor can I give you advices
Because you are more mature
Then the bee Queen.
(5)
That’s how things are
I bend before you
Like an emaciated lion
Grounded by years, loneliness and earthquake
I bend before you
And ask you again
Nay, I beg you as a beggar
To let me drink the glass of poison
And I promise you that I will never drink it again,
My daughter!
.....................
* Kelmat is the name of the poet’s daughter. She is ten years old when the poet writes this poem.
(1)
The moon is at the door
Hung by its feet.
(2)
The whole group is self-sufficient
As a cut string.
(3)
Friends begot hither and thither
Lies and trifles.
(4)
The content is detained within his self
None can redeem it
Nor even I.
(5)
Those who died
Had written well their destroyed poems.
(6)
Yesterday I died
In the morning I, as usual, woke up.
(7)
Hunger is a letter
All you need is to envelope it
And send to you
Sorry
To me.
(8)
The woman died: so did the dream, the sense and
The dawn
Her death was an occasion for other forty calamities.
(9)
Madness is beautiful
Because it is my post box; full of birds
And my future full of strata of darkness
(10)
My letters have protested
Against the grief mountains in themselves
And subdued them with a hand of steel
With patience and horror
(11)
The poet and the ruler died
The philosopher died
And the historian died
When the fruits seller died
The people, then, have protested.
(12)
My only friend who survived
Sent me a letter, full of serpents and owls
It filled my home with horror.
(13)
When I recited my poems yesterday
In a public celebration
A large mass of audience was there
I have never dreamt of.
Over there, there was none
But my heart,
My table
And my blood
(14)
Your love is a verse of light
And you; my sweetheart is
A she- prophet of darkness
(15)
When I wrote your name, I became embarrassed
I madly loved its letters
I feared that people would behold them
Nay, I feared that I would behold them myself
(16)
Where are you?
Bring back to my blood Africa’s drums
Asia’s follies
And the phantoms of the lower world.
(17)
Your love has become a poem
All the crazy people of the Earth are fond
Of it
How wonderful!
(18)
Your love has led my verse
To the essence of letters and dots
It has led me to superiority
To superiority madness
(19)
Th……….
The moon is at the door
It has lifted one foot!
(1)
Which awaits which?
Does the sun await the street?
Or does the street await the people: the simpletons
And the beggars?
Do the fields await the bees?
Or do the bees await death
Or does death await darkness?
Which awaits which?
Does disappointment await surprise?
Or does surprise await uselessness?
Does futility await lies?
Or do women await gossip?
Which awaits which?
Does the bridge await the Euphrates?
Or does the Euphrates await the hunched bridge?
Does the poet await the letters?
Or do the letters await the dots?
Which awaits which?
Does the killer await the victim?
Or does the victim await the knife?
Does time await people to put them to death?
Or do people wait time to beg or to become old?
Which awaits which?
Dows the magician await the Jin
Or does the Jin knock at the door
After being bored with wait?
(2)
What a wait!
When the sun cried I charged the street
When the fields cried I charged the bees
When fear cried I charged death
When disappointment cried I charged surprise
When women cried I charged the gossip
When the poet cried I charged letters
When the bridge cried I charged the Euphrates.
What a wait!
What a torture!
When the killer cried I charged the victim
When time cried I charged the people
When the magician cried I charged the Jin.
(3)
What a wait!
It is said that the Jin and I
Were awaiting
If they knew, they would not have tolerated this
Strange torture
If they knew, they would have flown, flown, flown
If………
O! Jin
Remember me … remember me
I am together with you in the flask of waiting
I am together with you in an iron flask.
1
The stork flew
The stork of my childhood
Flew farther and farther
But the meeting with it
Remained as a dream growing inside me
Like a growing fire in the crater of volcano
2
Alas! My ambiguous letters
Alas! My lost women
Alas! My masks that go on disgracing me
Alas! My years that follow one another
Meaninglessly or partially meaninglessly
Alas! My nakedness that besieged me
Like soldiers besieging an armless man
3
In times of black chairs
Dreams to fly lessen every day
They lessen
They lessen
Until they become as big as a sand grain
4
Who are you?
What makes me write to you my contemporary I laid?
Disclose of your selfishness
So that I can show you my orphanhood
Disclose of your miserliness
So that I can show my date palm
Disclose of your vagueness and plots
So that I can show you my explicitness and naivety
Disclose of your death
So that I can show my resurrection
5
I am no more than a child
Who fell in the sea, the sea of letters
He drowned and the letters wept for it
I am no more than a monk
Who saw a thin-skinned white violet undressing
He remained shivering all his life
I am no more than a feather
That came off a slaughtered bird
I am no more than s?n* of postponement
And delay and advent that does not happen
6
O! My stork
When will you come so that I can stop weeping
When will you perch so that I can stop my tears to well up?
When will you perch so that I can grope happiness
In your warm beak
And sense my boyhood
To laugh through the whiteness of your wonderful feathers?
7
The stork is still hovering around my heart
My heart which death, hunger and fire have confiscated
My heart which the dream to fly has confiscated
What will I do?
I who possess no hands to speak with
Nor legs to fly with
Nor lips to recall with
Nor a memory for practicing magic
Nor magic for catching my wonderful stork.
(1)
To Luck
I sent messages with a sharp tongue
And intensive reproach:
(You are the one who disordered my childhood
And crushed my youth
And confused my old age.)
Luck laughed, saying:
(All right
I will make of your death
An occasion full of joy and candles! )
(2)
When the unlucky man learnt to utter
His teeth came off and his words vanished!
When he learnt to walk, the roads vanished!
When he learnt to write
The word became no longer meaningful nor semi- meaningful!
When he learnt to fly, the sky disappeared!
(3)
On the ladder of luck
When I go a step up, the step collapses
And the ladder seems damned deep
(4)
The loaf is no longer a dream
It has become a love poem
Only recited at the presence of kings
(5)
With a little ill-luck
I love you, my lady
You have a lot of names and rendezvous
With much luck
You replied to my poems with stabs
(6)
The difference between the loaf and the luck is
As feeble as the spider web
The difference between the cloud and childhood is
Null
For Al-Azeez’s * wife stole their whiteness
And Josef’s brothers sold it for a few Dirhams
The difference between us is null
Since we come from one and the same nihility
(7)
(You will be merry when you die)
That was luck’s will
I accepted it and smiled
Then I laughed a little
And at length I giggled
And at length I giggled like a maniac.
............................
* Al-Azeez was the ruler of Egypt at Pharoa’s time
(1)
The letter has left me
And retired in a corner
It could hardly bear
The grievous mountains borne by the hands
Of my watch
It could hardly bear
My crazy loneliness
Nor my childhood that expanded
And turned into an endless sea
Nor my age which was nearly
Fifty calamities old
The letter has retired in a corner
Placed his head between his hands
And cried
I also cried until my soul flowed
I returned it to my letter
My letter cried until its dot flowed
I returned it to him ….to God
(2)
Thus I was destined
To see my head borne by spears
Like Al-Hussain’s head
To see my body ulcerate and die
Like Job’s body
To carry on my back
Prometheans Rock
In order to exchange the madness of the
Homeland by the unknown madness
The Euphrates ash by the ash of the
Crippled rivers
The joy of Tigris by the joy of the cloud
With worn-out under wears.
(3)
It was a happy day
During which I fetched a loaf
For my children, exiled far into dream
Without setting fire to Baghdad through
Haulage wars
Nor killing the disarmed simple people
Through Tamer lane wars
Now plundering females laves through
Ghingeze Khan Wars
Without Kneeling to the pharaoh of the Age
Without hoisting the Barbarians flag
Without interfering in the crippled towns’ wars.
A hot loaf
I baked it in the dream of the good letter
And in the heavenly dot whose stalk is stable
And whose heart is in the sky
But the thieves were waiting for me:
Pharaoh’s thieves
Haulage’s thieves
Tamerlane’s thieves
Ghingize Khan’s thieves
The Barbarians’ thieves
And the crippled towns’ thieves
They robbed me in the broad light
Cut my hand and blinded my eye
They stole my hot loaf
Tonight, what will I say to my children?
Tonight, what will I say to my heart?
Tonight, what will I say to my letter
And my dot?
(1)
Are the occasion of my loss and exhaustion?
So few to justify, O my voice, that you also
Become lost and exhausted?
(2)
You, my voice, was my throat’s nightingale
Now as you soared father away
My throat appeared to my eye-witness
As a cold cage of iron
(3)
Nobody can help me
In my trial
The doctors remained silent
The medicines became mute
The prayer trembled between my fingers
The only thing on the phone line was my tears
Shouting: hello, hello
(4)
As the pit of my grave deepens more and more
The poetry I write grows deeper and deeper
What an irony!
(5)
O! Friends! Pay attention
The nightingale flew away
And the crow laughed
(6)
When will you light?
Tell me: when will you light?
Or am I front of me member by member
Find myself die?
(7)
O my voice, the bird
Light down ... I will not whip you as a slave,
I will not let you thirst to death
Nor shout at you as mad men
I will not ask you to sing needlessly nor to protest
Nor to part with the text
When the text gets stupid.
Light down, Bird!
I will not let Sophocles pull out his creatures’ eyes
On the stage of my blood
Nor At-Tawhidi 1 burn his books every night
In the desert of my dream
Nor Al–Maarri 2 die alone
As I do
And as you do.
……………..
1: At-Tawhidi is one of the Arabic great philosophers who burns his book at the end of his life.
2: Al–Maarri is one of the Arabic famous poet and philosopher.
(1)
The kiss is a she-gazelle
The date is two eyes, a Sahara and a gun
(2)
The kiss is a love poem
The date is a stab in the belly
(3)
The kiss is a butterfly
The date is golden fish
(4)
The kiss is wonderful tenderness
The date is a big bed
(5)
The kiss is a feast
The date is gay children
In the middle of streets, crammed with
Horse-pulled carriages
(6)
The kiss is vagueness
The date is an attempt to decipher the puzzles
(7)
The kiss is a lie
The date is a false witness
(8)
The kiss is separation
The date is a song, glorifying separation
(9)
The kiss is an extinguished smile on a drunkard’s
Mouth
The date is a fragmented glass
(10)
The kiss is a legend
The date is a world legend conference
(11)
The kiss is a wait
The date is the poems of wait
Written in Cuneiform, Sanskrit and Arabic
On the existence book
(12)
The kiss is a blossom
The date is a garden full of honey
(13)
The kiss is a green coast
The date is a poet who desists smoking hope
(14)
The kiss is a star
The date is the sky held by a she-lover’s palm
(15)
The kiss is a drowning person
The date is a bottomless sea
(16)
The kiss is your astounding eyelash
The date is your smile that guides me
Every night to delicious death
And it does not leave me until the cock crows
(17)
The kiss is the dot of your n?n * or the n?n of
Your lost dot
The date is an alphabet revealing the talismans
Of the world
But they do not how to bring you back home
(18)
The kiss is friendship
The date is an engagement until death
(19)
The kiss is a chair
The date is a bed
(20)
The kiss is a key
The date is a body
(21)
The kiss is a violin
The date is a love dance
(22)
The kiss is a tear
The date is a swift shooting of rain drenching
Lovers in the Pleasure Garden
(23)
The kiss is a cry
The date is a romantic plot
(24)
The kiss is a green chamber
The date is closed curtains
(25)
The kiss is a song
The date is a singer, a composer and a poet
They all have cried because of the beautiful
Tune and words
(26)
The kiss is pleasant hustle
The date is secret willow rows
(27)
The date is a lost child
The date is a bride lamenting her staggering
Fortune
(28)
The kiss is a day dream
The date is heresy and hallucination
(29)
The kiss is a poem of a top level
The date is a collection of love poetry
Every character in it is your name
(30)
The kiss is a window
The date is a country home
Looking upon the sun and the duck
(31)
The kiss is a pleasure
The date is a call for writing on it
As a cureless deep death
(32)
The kiss is your dreamy eyes
The date is your lips; abandoning their
Wonderful miserliness
(33)
The kiss is a love hour
The date is a wedding night
And the wedding candles
And the bride’s white dress
(34)
The kiss is you
The date is you ............ of course !
………………….
* Arabic letter
(1)
Here I am!
I come back to your remembrance,
Come back like a beaten army
So, do not try with me your attempt
To count the wounded and missing.
(2)
O letter
Your dot was a winter fire
And smoke of a happy cigarette.
Your dot was the suns caught in hand,
A vague summer full of kisses
And abrupt entrance to the happy absurd.
(3)
After your parting,
My death began as a mythical festival.
When I asked about its name,
I was boxed on my mouth
Until my blood flowed.
(4)
Here I am!
I come back to you
Like an addict who decided
For the thousandth time
To give up drink
And managed so every time!
(5)
After you was my mirror
That smiled to my smile
And got excited at my coming,
You became my absurdity that seized me
Wherever it saw me,
Or whenever it remembered one letter
Of my broken letters.
(6)
I do not conceal this secret from you;
After you left, I turned into a sharp zero,
A perpetual loss,
And into poetry people loved
But I did not
Because it was bleeding
Only an intensive bleeding.
(7)
I do not conceal this secret from you;
After your green night,
The nights became fragments.
After your fresh bed
The beds were no more than death beds.
After your room on the top
The rooms rendered into basements.
After your sharp kiss and honey saliva,
The kisses became killed birds.
And after your words as good as childhood,
Words became artificial teeth.
(8)
After you left, time got lost
And nobody knew where.
I asked everything about everything
But nothing answered me about anything.
I published an advertisement
In all the newspapers,
Asking, where, where and where
So, I was accused of mystery
Forgetfulness and non-whereness.
(9)
I fancied women to be like you;
Trees of green and fruit of gold,
But my fancy was naked,
And my nakedness was great.
I fancied the towns to be like yours
To be myths of black love, kisses of fire
And stormy meetings like glassfuls of alcohol
But I found them towns of dead people
Who communicated through barking
And offered each other
Nothing but bouquets of insults.
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