I gave myself a name
And showed up
To pin my tombstones
So that the blueness shall split
Into boards and wings.
My hand shall reveal her passion
Finger by finger
My hand that saw.
When I infer my blood, I guide it
To a child girl
Who never lingered
She carried her dream and went by.
- On which tomb stone does it shine now ?
Like this door
Is a poet
Variegated by roadways
Branded by the eyes
Yet never drawn by an obscure whispering
. . It never opened its leaves for remembrance
So not to break down. .
A timber that has been ornamented by infatuation
For steps that approach then go away
A door that is burrowed by nostalgia . . like him is a poet
Who shall utter: the Poem of Fire
Once . . and for all.
A Wood Sculptured With Rapid Twigs
The sky is a star they drive
Towards a side that is blinking over their fingers.
Here is their pulsation running in the chests yet they show it to no one
None will hear it except that whose hands have fermented and are leading him . . as if they're a lamp.
They were bestowed upon with a knowledge from the earth
So their backs never bowed except for her.
They seeded a glazed blood
From a wood they sculptured with rapid twigs.
Since the time they have fasted, their eyes are weaving a white thread
For a flag that will flutter on the staff of their bones.
A Flute
A dove
Her flute shakes the curtains
And a dawn darts out
In pursue of solace.
A Pleating Shadow
Had I arranged the bed sheets
Or picked up a blue shirt
That was pleating in the corner of the shadow
Or carried an ashtray full of half smoked cigarettes
. . .
Then the corners of the room would have raised a lament
That has been silenced
By a cup in the kiss of her lipstick.
Stairways
He wrote before he grew old:
The moon is a window
We embezzle a palm-tree who carved her own back as a stairway
So as to annihilate the moon's night. .
. . .
Now
In front of a barren sea
The moon is a great sore.
Timber
Wounded is the tree
That walks at night.
People go out
Thus she seeks shelter in her own shadows.
Who is going to pursue her warmth ?
Whom is she going to roof over ?
Who is going to lean against her ?
. . .
Timber that weeps in the fields.
Mirror
At her door
I landed for two nights
Before the awakening of her way
I read a story by Yasunari Kawabata
Of a women who saw the world
in the mirror of a handicapped man.
The door surprised me then.
I searched in the box of my chest
For a mirror to install
So that she does not see me.
I Keep Blowing
Against a wall
From the whiteness of an empty night
No roses being sent by the flickering of the lamp
The air has pulled its breaths from my room
And timber burst forth
Letting me hear a wailing that bites inside.
. .
I take a rib from my chest
To draw a window
In her desert I ram a moon
On which I keep blowing.
The Marble of Shadow
Music upon your hand
Is being carved by waves
While the marble of shadow
Is cracking on its shores.
Your eyes have a fire
That follows wandering songs.
Is it a hymn,
Hidden by palm leaves, so that they don't
dry up ?
Or is it a cloud devised by my lungs ?
Don't Guard Your Feet Off The Road
This is your night
Don't guard your feet off the road
Let your heart goes to the limit of its darkness
And to the most constrained of its breathes.
This is your night
Push it to its pinnacle
May you one day hear the cry of a window
Being born into the world.
Ungrammatical
Words are like nets
By which I sew the sea . . and besiege the water.
Hence I shall embroider them as seemly to an obscure prey
Like a weaver whose dreams have given up
But who did not refrain from mending the space with stitches.
Al-Hasa
Between your feet is a land you haven't seen
So, excavate your chests for a dangling nation.
I have grabbed my firebrand.
Look !
There is a last palm tree dangled to my clothes
And a first village to acclimate to me.
A Dream
Skies
Lie in wait for our dreams
And mutilate them
While the insomnia is hurdling on the garden fence
And the heart is cramming full with Autumn.
So, mend the calamity of your fingers
With what is left from the waters of bewilderment.
The more slender you become
The more the river turns towards you.
A Midday Picking The Sun
The dream is their ladder,
When the road stumbles
They stone, with it, the void's desolation.
Upon their bones, leaned tranquillity-
aged walls.
Their hands grew inside the cracks
Their feet watering the muscle of time.
No morning palpitates for them
No awakening.. no coffee
Whenever a midday leaped picking its sun
They begged a shadow that mends its tatters
And to it, they relinquish their dream.
Crest Of A Candle
My shadow mounted the ceiling of the room
A crest of a candle swung back and forth
So that I sway in a narrow bed.
Winter
Clings to the throat of a solitary window
While a candle is pouring
The milk of infatuation.
Wind
Breaks the fire's neck
Hence we fall down into the well of the dark.
Ibraheem (1)
I see him every evening
Performing venesection on the language
Fixing cups on her back
Then he spits out of his mouth the darkest of her blood
Till his teeth blackened. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We come out at dawn
Immaculately from his windows.
Ibraheem (2)
Letters burned the palms of your hands
You blow your dreams into them
Before they cool down
Veins swelling with a child milk
Ribs that broke into buds
and dressed up with the flesh of your worry.
You set the sheet aside
Panting in her own sweat
And You withdraw a hand with what has been committed.
Ibraheem (3)
He rises
He plunges his hand in a window
And scoops a language
Which splits on his sheet of paper.
He dreams
So that words descend
Wiping the lightening off his forehead
To perform ablution with it.
My Shadow
After a sin that I have forgotten
A cry was wooded on my shoulder
And didn't dry out yet.
Lina
A women is drawing a wound
On the interior glass of a window
She sets her blood free into a disappearing street.
Whenever she seduces a dream
She takes away a handful of desire
And set it free
Like birds with no wings.
Night
He looked around
Right after a waiting that has passed away
Then in the same railroad car that was unoccupied
He came back filling the facing seat with what flew over of his expectation
Tenderly, he piled up what is in his pockets
As the price of two seats
So that the ticket man will not wake them up.
Translated by: Ghassan Al-Khunaizi