Translated by: Khalida Hamid
Whenever I collect the horror of my heart and say that I would refine it with the flowing present;
with the fountain with which I was born,
I saw that I came before or after and that I have no proper time to be called now.
It is too late now.
As being ready,
I called up myself and persuaded myself that I am from the yesterday,
from the perpetuity that was washed till it was torn.
I came from the ancient time.
In the ancient time,
I tackled a time thinking it the now while it was the hereafter of time and the despair of present of itself and its inability to be.
I am in the too-lateness of time.
Or let me say I am in the untrue of eternity.
I believed what no one else has promised.
I believed that time will come and I will come with it to be able, then, to say:
"I am" without being abandoned by a present or deceived by times.
But I am deceived.
Isn't he deceived who is tackled by two birds of ruin, and each claims that it is time and each flaps its wings against my hour; the hour of sunset; when I got bored of playing and wanted to come back to my mother's home?
To soften my heart's horror with her protective water; with the fountain of Euphrates where we both were born in one womb.
But I am lied to.
Isn't he lied to the one who is silent in the presence of a friend reciting the Holy Quran.
Then he turns round to find out that the speech is old and the friend is torn up by swords of remote air and his quran is opened on a forged sura beginning with "Now" and ends with " it is too late".
I am:
who is abandoned by the present;
the widower of moment,
the orphan of all times.
I have my own Kerbalaa and my Kerbalaa cannot be ended with a triangular arrow and a fir that eats the tenets.
My own Kerbalaa- the time- is past in its presence and imitates the impossibility.
It is just like the ruby of despair that renews itself in every time.
In every time there is a lateness of time.
***
Only the stray can guide us.
Those who lost the proof will help us and lead us to what we cannot stand.
We- who know exactly where we are- wished we realized where they are.
We wished we were with them and like them so that we no longer know a name or a trace for what we are in.
At night,
there is no glittering lamp to show them the way out of the maze.
The stars at the heart of sky are their shining traps.
We always wished to be among them so that no one can have a look at us.
But, oh!
How preposterous!
Our desire itself is present and lasting and without any absence.
Because it knows its way very well and creates- even in our fondness to straying- a crowd of lasting viewers who look at us from there; from the absolute presence to see us while we are hopelessly lost in what we ignores.
No, this is not straying.
We are the captives of a dummy selfishness when we demand such a straying full of peace of mind.
Let's confess.
We advanced in years.
We are caught by an early old age so we can no longer get astray.
In Paradise, as in Al-Rub' Al-Khali, there are so many strays.
Only one of them destroyed his straying with his two hands when he recognized the tree of knowledge and brought us to here.
Adam! stay in your Heavenly big straying and save us.
What have you done father?
Look at your sons' poverty;
they are fabricating small mazes to stray.
I am straying so I don't, in the midst of straying, know who I am but what people say about me and my sex.
At the jinn and men of the world, I stray.
If there is nobody to stray at, I stray at myself.
What a disappointment!
We became able to know all the road
Yesterday,
I had the same nightmare.
I saw myself in the middle of a limitless forest.
I tried to stray but I couldn't.
I was proceeding in the depth;
in the thick fathom,
but they were always able to find me easily.
Or, at last, I come across them without attention.
Their nightmare cunning smiles convinced me that I lost this amazing ability to hide, be absent and be named a stray.
I said goodbye to that Divine instinct.
I woke up depressed and remembered how I had been, in the Paradise of childhood, the quickest stray.
How often I get lost because of two cloaks; one of them is for my mother and the other is for a woman that drags me to Paradise in a market crowded with black cloaks.
I used to stray at the doorstep.
I used to get lost while gazing at a crack in the wall, so they call me and I don't hear them.
Between the palm tree and the stairs I didn't know where I am.
Being alone or with others nothing had been able to guide me.
But now,
all the world is pointing to me with its two hands, but you.
Where are your noble absent hands to take me with you,
you the stray?
***
If there are armies, the measures will be luxurious and forgotten like the gardens of aridity ripened unhurriedly.
Wisdom- these black treasures in the mouth of the wolf- make you resort to a live mate who raises his rusty iron above.
Salute the nothingness.
If there is war,
Baghdad will be pecking the corpse of Babel.
Or conversely,
A Ziggurat that is demolishing in the book of (Abou Mikhnif)
a Paradise like joyful stabs in the bowels of a asleep.
Justly he laughs at Iraq.
Justly he laughs at lads struggling with a drunken policeman:
His forged badges in his coat and his hands are fettered to a coined Dirhems() of gasp and sever cold.
What a shining badges on his miserable chest!
What a feathery hat; punctured while it avoids the thunderbolt with an amputated head!
What badges of bravery hanging over like the keys of a banker,
like sacrifices turned over by the sun:
Yes, Yes and No, No.
What a kick that is stamped on his face; the angle face!
What lazy airplanes that throws their backgammon in the desert!
Let's be eaten by grace and get healthy.
Eaten by grace because our faces became rotten out of the stab of lightening that heals.
And we get healthy because our bowels are saturated with poisons of the Marines.
Be eaten by grace and get healthy because a mangy dog had rub its skin against our ages and got lost.
If there is a war, our Babylonian brother will be sitting in the shadow untying the bandages out of his heart and playing at the buzz of flies;
At the Resurrections buried here and there,
At the improvised eternity,
At the obstinacy of the female who washes the dresses of mobs guarding bags of flour.
If truth is saturated with three bloods; menstruation, semi- menstruation and parturition- certainty will be cold as the poisoned fire in the women's house,
as the poor weeping on the morning star,
as the small idols in the word "Allah".
Or as the one when asked 'who are you?' his hands shiver of fever.
And you;
brother who is set upright on the Paradise with the burdensome of ruined dawn and the chatter of teeth.
You,
who tears up the records of the informants in search of a surname that suits the whiteness of your shoulders,
had a sun of water exploded in your dresses?
Or,
is it war, and your enemies are kids who bargain you with the roar of gold,
With the melodious prophecies as boats tied to piles of books?
Your enemies; brothers, the cooks of the days, are begging the doors towards doors of desperate unrest that refreshes the female in you.
The female shaking in your bowels;
the female, that is you, except for your proofs and suspicion.
Except for the absolute proofs of nonattendance written with kicks.
Is it, for this reason,
brother- who guards the masks of tomorrow and its ruins- you jump from a storm that does not know you to storm that you do not know?
Is it, for this reason,
you untie the bandages out of your heart being aided by the dumb spring that pat- with black hands- on your iron that no one will get away from?
Is it, for this reason,
your Baghdad pecks the corpse of your Babel?
Or,..
conversely,
Your Babel is locked,
And its key is with you.