A State of Siege


Poem No.: 14 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Here, where the hills slope before the sunset and the chasm of time

near gardens whose shades have been cast aside

we do what prisoners do

we do what the jobless do

we sow hope

***

In a land where the dawn sears

we have become more doltish

and we stare at the moments of victory

there is no starry night in our nights of explosions

our enemies stay up late, they switch on the lights

in the intense darkness of this tunnel

***

Here after the poems of Job, we wait no more

***

This siege will persist until we teach our enemies

models of our finest poetry

***

the sky is leaden during the day

and a fiery orange at night… but our hearts

are as neutral as the flowery emblems on a shield

***

here, not “I”

Here, Adam remembers the clay of which he was born

***

He says, on the verge of death, he says,

“I have no more earth to lose”

Free am I, close to my ultimate freedom, I hold my fortune in my own hands

In a few moments, I will begin my life

born free of father and mother

I will chose letters of sky blue for my name

***

Under siege, life is the moment between remembrance

of the first moment, and forgetfulness of the last

***

here, under the mountains of smoke, on the threshold of my home,

time has no measure

We do what those who give up the ghost do…

we forget our pain

***

Pain is when the housewife forsakes hanging up the clothes to dry and is content

that this flag of Palestine should be without stain

***

There is no Homeric echo here

Myths come knocking on our door when we need them

There is no Homeric echo here… only a general

looking through the rubble for the awakening state

concealed within the galloping horse from Troy

***

The soldiers measure the space between being and nothingness

with field-glasses behind a tank’s armoury

***

We measure the space between our bodies and the coming rockets

with our sixth sense alone

***

You there, by the threshold of our door

Come in, and sip with us our Arabic coffee

[you may even feel that you are human, just as we are]

you there, by the threshold of our door

take your rockets away from our mornings

we may then feel secure

[and almost human]

***

We may find time for relaxation and fine art

We may play cards, and read our newspapers

Catching up on the news of our wounded past

and we may look up our star signs in the year

two thousand and two, the camera smiles

to those born under the sign of the siege

***

Whenever yesterday comes to me, I say to her,

Now’s not the right time. Go

and come tomorrow!

***

I wrack my head, but uselessly.

What can someone like me think of, there,

on the tip of the hillside, for the past 3 thousand years,

and in this passing moment?

My thoughts slay me

my memory awakens me

***

When the helicopters disappear the doves fly back

white, very white, marking the cheeks of the horizon

with liberated wings. They revive their radiance and their ownership

of the sky, and of playfulness. Higher and higher they fly,

the doves, very white. ‘O that the sky

was real’ [a man passing between two bombs cried]

A sparkling sky, a vision, lightning!

all very similar….

soon I will know if this is indeed

a revelation

or my close friends will know that the poem

has gone, and yoked its poet

***

[to a critic]: Don’t interpret my words

as you stir the sugar in your cup, or munch your breast of chicken!

Words put me under siege in my sleep…

the words I did not utter.

They write me, then leave me searching for the remains of my sleep

***

The evergreen Cypresses behind the soldiers are minarets protecting

the sky from falling. Behind the barbed wire

are soldiers urinating- protected by a tank.

The Autumn day completes its golden stroll on the pavements of

a street as empty as a church after Sunday prayers

***

Tomorrow we will love life.

When tomorrow comes, life will be something to adore

just as it is, ordinary, or tricky

gray, or colourful…stripped of judgement day and purgatory…

and if joy is a necessity

let it be

light on the heart and the back

Once embittered by joy, twice shy

***

A satirical writer said to me:

If I knew the end of the story at the very beginning

there would be nothing to laugh about!

***

[To a killer:] If you reflected upon the face

of the victim you slew, you would have remembered your mother in the room

full of gas. You would have freed yourself

of the bullet’s wisdom,

and changed your mind: ‘I will never find myself thus.’

***

[To another killer:] If you left the foetus thirty days

in its mother’s womb, things would have been different.

The occupation would be over and this suckling infant

would forget the time of the siege

and grow up a healthy child

reading at school, with one of your daughters

the ancient history of Asia.

They might even fall in love

and give birth to a daughter [she would be Jewish by birth].

What, then, have you done now?

Your daughter is now a widow

and your granddaughter an orphan.

What have you done with your scattered family?

And how have you slain three doves in one story?

***

This verse was not

really necessary. Forget about the refrain

and forget about being economical with the pain.

It’s all superflous

like so much dross

***

The mist is darkness- a thick, white darkness

peeled by an orange, and a promising woman

***

The siege is lying in wait.

It is lying in wait on a tilted stairway

in the midst of a storm.

***

We are alone. We are alone to the point

of drunkenness with our own aloneness,

with the occasional rainbow visiting.

***

We have brothers and sisters overseas..

kind sisters, who love us..

who look our way and weep.

And secretly they say

“I wish that siege was here, so that I could…”

But they cannot finish the sentence.

Do not leave us alone. No.

Do not leave us alone.

***

Our losses are between two and eight a day.

And ten are wounded.

Twenty homes are gone.

Forty olive groves destroyed,

in addition to the structural damage

afflicting the veins of the poem, the play,

and the unfinished painting.

***

In the alleyway, lit by an exiled lantern,

I see a refugee camp at the crossroads of the winds.

The south rebels against the wind.

The east is a west turned religious.

The west is a murderous truce minting the coinage of peace.

As for the north, the distant north,

it is not a place or a geographical vicinity.

It is the conference of heavenly divinity.

***

A woman said to a cloud: cover my dear one,

for my clothes are wet with his blood.

***

If you are not rain, o dear one,

then be a tree,

fertile and verdant. Be a tree.

And if not a tree, o dear one

be a stone

laden with dew. Be a stone.

And if not a stone, o dear one,

be the moon itself

in the dreams of she who loves you. Be the moon itself.

[thus a woman said

to her son, in his funeral]

***

O you who are sleepless tonight, did you not tire

of following the light in our story

and the red blaze in our blood?

Did you not tire, you who are sleepless tonight?

***

Standing here. Sitting here. Always here. Eternally here,

we have one aim and one aim only: to continue to be.

Beyond that aim we differ in all.

We differ on the form of the national flag (we would have done well if we had chosen

o living heart of mine, the symbol of a simple mule).

We differ on the words of the new anthem

(we would have done well to choose a song on the marriage of doves).

We differ on the duties of women

(we would have done well to choose a woman to run the security services).

We differ on proportions, public and private.

We differ on everything. We have one aim: to continue to be.

After fulfilling this aim, we will have time for other choices.

***

He said to me, on his way to jail,

“When I am released I will know that praise of nation

is like pouring scorn on nation-

a trade like any other!

***

A little of the infinite blue

suffices

to reduce the burden of our times

and cleanse the mud from this place right now

***

The spirit needs to improvise

and walk upon its silken soles

by my side, as hand in hand, two old friends

we share a crust of bread

and an old flask of wine

walking the path together,

then our days fork off into two separate paths:

I to the unknown, and she

sits squatting upon a high rock

***

[to a poet] Whenever the sunset eludes you

you are ensnared in the solitude of the gods.

Be ‘the essence’ of your lost subject

and the subject of your lost essence. Be present in your absence

***

He finds time for sarcasm:

My telephone has stopped ringing.

My doorbell has also stopped ringing.

So how did you know

that I am not here?

***

He finds time for song:

Waiting for you, I cannot wait

I cannot read Dostoyevsky

nor listen to Umm Kalthum, Maria Callas or another.

Waiting for you, the hands of the watch go from right

to left

to a time without a place.

Waiting for you, I didn’t wait for you.

I waited for eternity.

***

He asks her, “What kind of flower is your favourite?”

She says, “The carnation. The black carnation.”

He asks her, “And where will you take me, with those black carnations?”

She says, “To the abyss of life within me.”

She says, “Further, further, further.”

***

This siege will endure until the besiegers feel, like

the besieged

that anger

is an emotion like any other.

***

“I don’t love you. I don’t hate you,”

The prisoner said to the interrogator. “My heart is full

of that which is of no concern to you. My heart is full of the aroma of sage.

My heart is innocent, radiant, brimming.

There is no time in the heart for tests. No.

I do not love you. Who are you that I may give my love to you?

Are you part of my being? Are you a coffee rendezvous?

Are you the wind of the flute, and a song, that I may love you?

I hate imprisonment. But I do not hate you.”

Thus a prisoner said to the investigator. “My feelings are not your concern.

My emotions are my own private night…

my night which moves from bed to bed free of rhyme

and of double meanings!

***

We sat far from our destinies, like birds

which build their nests in cracks in statues

or in chimneys, or in tents

erected on the prince’s path at the time of the hunt

***

On my ruins the shadows grow green

and the wolf sleeps on a hybernating poem,

dreaming, like me, and like a guardian angel,

that life is pure and free of label

***

Myths refuse to amend their patterns.

Perhaps they were struck by a crack in the hull;

perhaps their ships have been stranded on

a land without a people.

Thus the idealist was overcome by the realist.

But the ships will not change their mould.

Whenever an unpleasant reality crosses their path

they demolish it with a bulldozer.

The colour of their truth dictates the text: she is beautiful,

white, without blemish.

***

[to a semi-orientalist] Let’s say things are the way you think they are -

that I am stupid, stupid, stupid

and that I cannot play golf

or understand high technology

nor can fly a plane!

Is that why you have ransomed my life to create yours?

If you were another - if I were another

we would have been a couple of friends who confessed our need for folly

But the fool, like Shylock the merchant,

consists of heart, and bread, and two frightened eyes

***

Under siege, time becomes a location

solidified eternally

Under siege, place becomes a time

abandoned by past and future

***

This low, high land

this holy harlot…

we do not pay much attention to the magic of these words

a cavity may become a vacuum in space

a contour in geography

***

The dead besiege me with every new day

and ask me, “Where were you? Give back

to the lexicon all the words

you offered me

and let the sleepers sleep without phantoms in their dreams!

The dead teach me the lesson: there is no aesthetic beyond freedom

***

The dead point out to me: why search beyond the horizon

for the eternal virgins? We loved life

on earth, between the fig and the pine trees

but we couldn’t find our way even there. We searched

until we gave life all we owned: the purple blood in our veins

***

The dead besiege me. “Do not walk in the funeral

if you did not know me. I seek no compliments

from man nor beast

***

The dead warn me. “Do not believe their rejoicing.

Listen instead to my dad as he looks at my photo crying.

“How did you take my place, son, and jump ahead of me?

I should have gone first! I should have gone first!”

***

The dead besiege me. “I have only changed my place of abode and my furnishings.

The deer now walk on my bedroom’s roof

and the moon warms the ceiling from the pain

thus putting an end to my pain

to put an end to my wailing.”

***

and the moon warms the ceiling

to put an end to my wailing.”

***

This siege will endure until we are truly persuaded

into choosing a harmless slavery, but

in total freedom!

***

To resist: that means to ensure the health

of heart and testicles, and that your ancient disease

is still alive and well in you

a disease called hope

***

in the remains of the dawn I walk outside of my own body

in the remains of the night I hear the footsteps of my own being

***

I raise my cup to those who drink with me

to an awakening to the beauty of the butterfly

in the long tunnel of this dark night

***

I raise my cup to those who drink with me

in the thick darkness of a night overflowing with crippled souls

I raise my cup to the apparition in my being

***

[to a reader] Don’t trust the poem

She is the absentee daughter. She is neither an intuition

nor a surmise, but a sense of disaster

***

If love is crippled, I will heal it

with exercise and humour

and with separating the singer from the song

***

My friends are ever preparing a party for me-

a farewell party, and a comfortable grave in the shadow of the oak

together with a marble witness from the tombstone of time

But I seem to be first in attending their funerals.

Who has died today?

***

The siege is transforming me from a singer

to a sixth string on a five string violin

***

The deceased, daughter of

the deceased, who is herself daughter of the deceased, who is the deceased’s sister

The deceased resister’s sister is related by marriage to the mother of the deceased, who is grandaughter of the deceased’s grandfather

and neighbour to the deceased’s uncle (etc. ..etc.)

No news worries the developed world,

for the time of barbarism has passed

and the victim is Joe Bloggs. Nobody knows his name,

and the tragedy, like the truth, is relative (etc. ..etc.)

***

Quiet, quiet, for the soldiers need

at this hour to listen to the songs

which the dead resisters had listened to, and have remained

like the smell of coffee, in their blood, fresh

***

Truce, truce. A time to test the teachings: can helicopters be turned into ploughshares?

We said to them: truce, truce, to examine intentions.

The flavour of peace may be absorbed by the soul.

Then we may compete for the love of life using poetic images.

They replied, “Don’t you know that peace begins with oneself,

if you wish to open the door to our citadel of truth?

So we said, “And then?”

***

Writing is a small ant which bites extinction.

Writing is a bloodless wound.

***

Our cups of coffee, and the birds, and the green trees

with the blue shade, and the sun leaping from wall

to wall like a doe

and the waters in the skies of infinite shapes, in what is left to us

of sky…and other matters the memory of which has been put on hold

prove that this morning is strong and beautiful

and that we are guests of evermore

--------------------

Ramallah - January 2002

Translated by Ramsis Amun

My Mother


Poem No.: 64 النص العربي: لا يوجد




I long for my mother's bread

My mother's coffee

Her touch

Childhood memories grow up in me

Day after day

I must be worth my life

At the hour of my death

Worth the tears of my mother.

***

And if I come back one day

Take me as a veil to your eyelashes

Cover my bones with the grass

Blessed by your footsteps

Bind us together

With a lock of your hair

With a thread that trails from the back of your dress

I might become immortal

Become a God

If I touch the depths of your heart.

***

If I come back

Use me as wood to feed your fire

As the clothesline on the roof of your house

Without your blessing

I am too weak to stand.

***

I am old

Give me back the star maps of childhood

So that I

Along with the swallows

Can chart the path

Back to your waiting nest.

Diary of a Palestinian Wound


Poem No.: 65 النص العربي: لا يوجد




For Fadwa Tuqan

...

We do not need to be reminded:

Mount Carmel is in us

and on our eyelashes the grass of Galilee.

Do not say: If we could run to her like a river.

Do not say it:

We and our country are one flesh and bone.

***

Before June we were not fledgeling doves

so our love did not wither in bondage.

Sister, these twenty years

our work was not to write poems

but to be fighting.

***

The shadow that descends over your eyes

-demon of a God

who came out of the month of June

to wrap around our heads the sun-

his color is martyrdom

the taste of prayer.

How well he kills, how well he resurrects!

***

The night that began in your eyes-

in my soul it was a long night's end:

Here and now we keep company

on the road of our return

from the age of drought.

***

And we came to know what makes the voice of the nightingale

a dagger shining in the face of the invaders.

We came to know what makes the silence of the graveyard

a festival...orchards of life.

***

You sang your poems, I saw the balconies

desert their walls

the city square extending to the midriff of the mountain:

It was not music we heard.

It was not the color of words we saw:

A million heroes were in the room.

***

This land absorbs the skins of martyrs.

This land promises wheat and stars.

Worship it!

We are its salt and its water.

We are its wound, but a wound that fights.

***

Sister, there are tears in my throat

and there is fire in my eyes:

I am free.

No more shall I protest at the Sultan's Gate.

All who have died, all who shall die at the Gate of Day

have embraced me, have made of me a weapon.

***

Ah my intractable wound!

My country is not a suitcase

I am not a traveler

I am the lover and the land is the beloved.

***

The archaeologist is busy analyzing stones.

In the rubble of legends he searches for his own eyes

to show

that I am a sightless vagrant on the road

with not one letter in civilization's alphabet.

Meanwhile in my own time I plant my trees.

I sing of my love.

***

It is time for me to exchange the word for the deed

Time to prove my love for the land and for the nightingale:

For in this age the weapon devours the guitar

And in the mirror I have been fading more and more

Since at my back a tree began to grow.


Passport


Poem No.: 67 النص العربي: لا يوجد




They did not recognize me in the shadows

That suck away my color in this Passport

And to them my wound was an exhibit

For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs

They did not recognize me,

Ah . . . Don't leave

The palm of my hand without the sun

Because the trees recognize me

All the songs of the rain recognize me

Dont' leave me pale like the moon!

***

All the birds that followed my palm

To the door of the distant airport

All the wheatfields

All the prisons

All the white tombstones

All the barbed boundaries

All the waving handkerchiefs

All the eyes

were with me,

But they dropped them from my passport

***

Stripped of my name and identity?

On a soil I nourished with my own hands?

Today Job cried out

Filling the sky:

Don't make an example of me again!

Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,

Don't ask the trees for their names

Don't ask the valleys who their mother is

From my forehead bursts the sword of light

And from my hand springs the water of the river

All the hearts of the people are my identity

So take away my passport!


Pride and Fury


Poem No.: 68 النص العربي: لا يوجد




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 ate 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

Oh My Father, I am Yusif


Poem No.: 84 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Father! I am Yusif

Oh father!

My brothers neither love me

nor want me in their midst.

Oh father, they assault me,

they stone me and

with insults they shower me.

My brothers wish me dead

so they give their false eulogies.

They shut your door before me,

and from your field

I was expelled.

They poisoned my grapevines,

oh father!

When the passing breeze

jested with my hair,

they all became envious,

outraged at you and me.

What have I done to them, father,

and what loss have I caused?

Butterflies rest on my shoulder,

wheat bows toward me

and birds hover above my hands.

What then did I do wrong, father

and why me?

You're the one who named me Yusif!

They pushed me down the well

and then they blamed the wolf.

Oh, father! The wolf is more merciful

than my brothers.

Did I wrong anyone

when I told about my dream?

Of eleven planets, I dreamt,

and of the sun and the moon

all kneeling before me.

لوركا

Ahmad Al-Za’tar


Poem No.: 85 النص العربي: لا يوجد




For two hands, of stone and of thyme

I dedicate this song.. For Ahmad, forgotten between two butterflies

The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and

The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me

..From the oozing old wound to the contours of the land I descend, and

The year marked the separation of the sea from the cities of ash, and

I was alone

Again alone

O alone? And Ahmad

Between two bullets was the exile of the sea

A camp grows and gives birth to fighters and to thyme

And an arm becomes strong in forgetfulness

Memory comes from trains that have left and

Platforms that are empty of welcome and of jasmine

In cars, in the landscape of the sea, in the intimate nights of prison cells

In quick liaisons and in the search for truth was

The discovery of self

In every thing, Ahmad found his opposite

For twenty years he was asking

For twenty years he was wandering

For twenty years, and for moments only, his mother gave him birth

In a vessel of banana leaves

And departed

He seeks an identity and is struck by the volcano

The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and

The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me

I am Ahmad the Arab, he said

I am the bullets, the oranges and the memory

__________

(Translated by Tania Nasir for publication in Ulf Thomas Moberg’s 1998 exhibit catalogue: “Palestinian Art”, published in Stockholm by Cinclus)


Rita And The Rifle


Poem No.: 86 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Between Rita and my eyes

There is a rifle

And whoever knows Rita

Kneels and plays

To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes

And I kissed Rita

When she was young

And I remember how she approached

And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids

And I remember Rita

The way a sparrow remembers its stream

Ah, Rita

Between us there are a million sparrows and images

And many a rendezvous

Fired at by a rifle

***

Rita's name was a feast in my mouth

Rita's body was a wedding in my blood

And I was lost in Rita for two years

And for two years she slept on my arm

And we made promises

Over the most beautiful of cups

And we burned in the wine of our lips

And we were born again

***

Ah, Rita!

What before this rifle could have turned my eyes from yours

Except a nap or two or honey-colored clouds?

Once upon a time

Oh, the silence of dusk

In the morning my moon migrated to a far place

Towards those honey-colored eyes

And the city swept away all the singers

And Rita

***

Between Rita and my eyes—

A rifle


Muhammad


Poem No.: 87 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Muhammad

Living on his father's lap

frightened by the sky's inferno: Protect me father

from flying above, my wing is too

small for the wind... and the light is pitch-black

***

Muhammad wants to return home

without a bicycle or a new shirt.

Wants to go to the school bench

to the syntax and etymology notebook.

Take us to our home,dad,so i may prepare for my

studies and continue my living little by little over

the sea shore,under the palm tree and

nothing farther,nothing farther.

***

Muhammad

Facing an army without having a stone or any planet's

shrapnel-s.He didn't write it,it was written for him

on the wall.My liberty will not die,but i will die

defending my liberty.No horizon will even shield

Babel's pigeons.And still born a boy with a name that

carries condemnation along with it.How many more times

will boys be born minus a country minus a childhood

tryst.He will dream if the dream comes,and the land is

lacerated.......and a house of worship.

***

Muhammad

His death was inescapably coming but he remembered

seeing a leopard on the television screen and when the

leopard approached the poisoned milk,he did not covet

it as if the milk is going to tame

savagery.Therefore,i will escape the boy

said,weeping:My life is hidden in my mom's closet.I

will escape....and bear witness.

***

Muhammad

A poor angle with an arm reach of a cold blooded hunter.

From the hour when the cameras focused on the child's

lonely movements,in his own shadow,his conspicuous

face as dawn,and conspicuous heart as an apple,and his

conspicuous fingers as candle and whatever was above

his pants was conspicuous.His hunter(murderer)had the

option of re-thinking and saying:Let me leave him

until he learns to pronounce his Palestine

non-erroneously.Let me leave him now and kill him

whenever he become a maverick.

***

Muhammad

Small Jesus sleeps and dreams inside the heart of a

holy picture made out of brass.

Out of olive branch

Out of renewed people's spirit.

***

Muhammad

Surplus of blood more than what the prophets need.

Ascend to the final fame.

Oh Muhammad.

Only Iraq


Poem No.: 88 النص العربي: لا يوجد




I remember A’SSayyab*, shouting at the Gulf in vain:

Iraq, Iraq, Only Iraq…

And from echo comes the only answer.

I remember A’SSayyab....at this Soumari space

A female had triumphed over the sterility of haze

And bequeathed us both the earth and the exile.

I remember A’Ssayyab…that poetry is born in Iraq

So be an Iraqi to become a poet O friend!

I remember A’Ssayyab…who did not find life as he had imagined

Between the Tigris and Euphrates, and did not think as

Gelgamesh had thought of the herbs of eternity, and did not think of resurrection

Thereafter…

I remember AA’Ssayyab…taking from Hamourabi all the lawa

To camouflage loins, and to walk to his tomb

I remember A’Ssayyab, when I cathch fever and hallucinate:

My brothers were preparing dinner to the army of Hulagu,

And no servants but them…my brothers!

I remeber A’Ssayyab…we have not dream of what is not worthy

As the bees’ food, and have not dream of more than

Two small hands shaking our absence…

I remember A’Ssayyab… blacksmiths of my death are arising

From the tombs and manufacturing our shakles!

I remember A’Ssayyab… that poetry is an experience and exile,

Twins, and we have not dream of more than a life

As the life, or die the way we die:

Iraq, Iraq, Only Iraq.

__________

Published by the London-based Al Quds Al Araby

[Sunday March 30, 20003- the 11th day of US-led Invasion on Iraq]

_______

* Bader Shaker A’Ssayyab is a renowned Iraqi poet, died outside Iraq in the early sixties of the last century.

He Is Calm, and I Am Too


Poem No.: 89 النص العربي: لا يوجد




He is calm,

And I am too.

He drinks lemon tea,

And I drink coffee.

(this is the only thing different about us)

He, like me, wears a loose striped shirt,

And I stare, like him, in a monthly magazine.

He does not see me as I eye him discreetly;

I do not see him as he eyes me discreetly.

He is calm,

And I am too.

He asks the waiter for something;

I ask the waiter for something.

A black cat passes between us,

And I touch its night of fur;

He touches its night of fur.

I do not tell him: The sky is clear today,

More blue;

He does not tell me: the sky is clear today.

He is the seen and the one who sees;

I am the seen and the one ho sees.

I move my left leg;

He moves his right leg.

I hum the melody of a song;

He hums the melody of a song.

I wonder: Is he the mirror wherein I see myself?

Then I look towards his eyes, and I do not see him.

I leave the coffee shop in a hurry,

I think: Maybe he is a killer,

Or maybe he is only a man passing through

And though I am a killer.
Psalm Three


Poem No.: 90 النص العربي: لا يوجد




On the day when my words

were earth...

I was a friend to stalks of wheat.

***

On the day when my words

were wrath

I was a friend to chains.

***

On the day when my words

were stones

I was a friend to streams.

***

On the day when my words

were a rebellion

I was a friend to earthquakes.

***

On the day when my words

were bitter apples

I was a friend to the optimist.

***

But when my words became

honey...

flies covered

my lips!...

__________

Translated by Ben Bennani

I Come From There


Poem No.: 91 النص العربي: لا يوجد




I come from there and I have memories

Born as mortals are, I have a mother

And a house with many windows,

I have brothers, friends,

And a prison cell with a cold window.

Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,

I have my own view,

And an extra blade of grass.

Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,

And the bounty of birds,

And the immortal olive tree.

I walked this land before the swords

Turned its living body into a laden table.

***

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother

When the sky weeps for her mother.

And I weep to make myself known

To a returning cloud.

I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood

So that I could break the rule.

I learnt all the words and broke them up

To make a single word: Homeland.....

__________

Translated by Mona Anis
Under Siege


Poem No.: 92 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time

Close to the gardens of broken shadows,

We do what prisoners do,

And what the jobless do:

We cultivate hope.

***

A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent

For we closely watch the hour of victory:

No night in our night lit up by the shelling

Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us

In the darkness of cellars.

***

Here there is no "I".

Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

***

On the verge of death, he says:

I have no trace left to lose:

Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand.

Soon I shall penetrate my life,

I shall be born free and parentless,

And as my name I shall choose azure letters...

***

You who stand in the doorway, come in,

Drink Arabic coffee with us

And you will sense that you are men like us

You who stand in the doorways of houses

Come out of our morningtimes,

We shall feel reassured to be

Men like you!

***

When the planes disappear, the white, white doves

Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven

With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession

Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves

Fly off. Ah, if only the sky

Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

***

Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting

The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel

Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank—

And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in

A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass...

***

[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face

And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the

Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle

And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way

to find one’s identity again.

***

The siege is a waiting period

Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.

***

Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment

Were it not for the visits of the rainbows.

***

We have brothers behind this expanse.

Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep.

Then, in secret, they tell each other:

"Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence:

"Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us."

***

Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day.

And ten wounded.

And twenty homes.

And fifty olive trees...

Added to this the structural flaw that

Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas.

***

A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved

For my clothing is drenched with his blood.

***

If you are not rain, my love

Be tree

Sated with fertility, be tree

If you are not tree, my love

Be stone

Saturated with humidity, be stone

If you are not stone, my love

Be moon

In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon

[So spoke a woman

to her son at his funeral]

***

Oh watchmen! Are you not weary

Of lying in wait for the light in our salt

And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound

Are you not weary, oh watchmen?

***

A little of this absolute and blue infinity

Would be enough

To lighten the burden of these times

And to cleanse the mire of this place.

***

It is up to the soul to come down from its mount

And on its silken feet walk

By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime

Friends who share the ancient bread

And the antique glass of wine

May we walk this road together

And then our days will take different directions:

I, beyond nature, which in turn

Will choose to squat on a high-up rock.

***

On my rubble the shadow grows green,

And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat

He dreams as I do, as the angel does

That life is here...not over there.

***

In the state of siege, time becomes space

Transfixed in its eternity

In the state of siege, space becomes time

That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow.

***

The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day

And questions me: Where were you? Take every word

You have given me back to the dictionaries

And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz.

***

The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse

I did not look

For the virgins of immortality for I love life

On earth, amid fig trees and pines,

But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it

With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure.

***

The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations

Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph

How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me.

I first, I the first one!

***

The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed.

I put a gazelle on my bed,

And a crescent of moon on my finger

To appease my sorrow.

***

The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty!

***

Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health,

The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease:

The disease of hope.

***

And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior

And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me.

***

Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to

The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the

Blackness of this tunnel!

***

Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me

In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces:

Greetings to my apparition.

***

My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,

A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees

A marble epitaph of time

And always I anticipate them at the funeral:

Who then has died...who?

***

Writing is a puppy biting nothingness

Writing wounds without a trace of blood.

***

Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees

In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall

To another like a gazelle

The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us

Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories

Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,

And that we are the guests of eternity.

_____________

Translated by Marjolijn De Jager
Without exile, who am I?


Poem No.: 93 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Stranger on the bank, like the river . . . tied up to your

name by water. Nothing will bring me back from my free

distance to my palm tree: not peace, nor war. Nothing

will inscribe me in the Book of Testaments. Nothing,

nothing glints off the shore of ebb and flow, between

the Tigris and the Nile. Nothing

gets me off the chariots of Pharaoh. Nothing

carries me for a while, or makes me carry an idea: not

promises, nor nostalgia. What am I to do, then? What

am I to do without exile, without a long night

staring at the water?

Tied up

to your name

by water . . .

Nothing takes me away from the butterfly of my dreams

back into my present: not earth, nor fire. What

am I to do, then, without the roses of Samarkand? What

am I to do in a square that burnishes the chanters with

moon-shaped stones? Lighter we both have

become, like our homes in the distant winds. We have

both become friends with the clouds'

strange creatures; outside the reach of the gravity

of the Land of Identity. What are we to do, then . . . What

are we to do without exile, without a long night

staring at the water?

Tied up

to your name

by water . . .

Nothing's left of me except for you; nothing's left of you

except for me -- a stranger caressing his lover's thigh: O

my stranger! What are we to do with what's left for us

of the stillness, of the siesta that separates legend from legend?

Nothing will carry us: not the road, nor home.

Was this road the same from the start,

or did our dreams find a mare among the horses

of the Mongols on the hill, and trade us off?

And what are we to do, then?

What

are we to do

without

exile?

___________

Translated by Anton Shammas from 'The Bed of the Stranger', Riad El-Rayyes Books, Beirut,

Sonnet [ VI ]


Poem No.: 94 النص العربي: لا يوجد




A pine tree in your right hand. A willow in your left. This

and slept on my shoulder, near one of your regions, and so what

***

dozes off, and a moon out of your shadows wakes to guard its trees.

a heavenly ground for the salaam of the birds, near echo?

***

Like two rivers in the dreamer's paradise of what you do on the banks

and cry by the river: what isn't feminized . . . is in vain.

A bit of weakness in metaphor is enough for tomorrow.

_________

translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

Like two rivers in the dreamer's paradise of what you do on the banks

to yourself carried above yourself. The wolf might carry a flute

and cry by the river: what isn't feminized . . . is in vain.

***

A bit of weakness in metaphor is enough for tomorrow.

For the berries to ripen on the fence, and for the sword to break under dew

_________

translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah


Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers


Poem No.: 95 النص العربي: لا يوجد




My sky is ashen. Scratch my back. And undo

slowly, you stranger, my braids. And tell me

what's on your mind. Tell me what crossed

Youssef's mind. Tell me some simple

talk . . . talk a woman always desires

to be told. I don't want the phrase

complete. Gesture is enough to scatter me in the rise

of butterflies between springheads and the sun. Tell me

I am necessary for you like sleep, and not like nature

filling up with water around you and me. And spread

over me an endless blue wing . . .

My sky is ashen,

as a blackboard is ashen, before

writing on it. So write with my blood's ink anything

that changes it: an utterance . . . two, without

excessive aim at metaphor. And say we are

two stranger birds in Egypt

and in Syria. Say we are two stranger birds

in our feathers. And write my name and yours

beneath the phrase. What time is it now? What color

is my face and yours in new mirrors?

I own nothing for anything to resemble me.

Did the water mistress love you more? Did she seduce you

by the sea rock? Confess now

that you have extended your wilderness twenty years

to stay prisoner in her hands. And tell me

what you think of when the sky is ashen . . .

My sky is ashen.

I resemble what no longer resembles me.

Do you want to return to your exile night

in a mermaid's hair? Or do you want to return

to your home figs? For no honey wounds a stranger

here or there? So what time is it now?

What's the name of this place we're in? And

what's the difference between my sky and your land. Tell me

what Adam said in secret to himself. Was he emancipated

when he remembered. Tell me anything that changes the sky's

ashen color. Tell me some simple

talk, talk a woman desires

to be told every now and then. Say

that two people, like you and me,

can carry all this resemblance between fog

and mirage, then safely return. My sky

is ashen, so what do you think of when the sky

is ashen?

In Jerusalem


Poem No.: 97 النص العربي: لا يوجد




In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How

do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?

Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?

I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see

no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.

All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly

then I become another. Transfigured. Words

sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger

mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”

I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white

biblical rose. And my hands like two doves

on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.

I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,

transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?

I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I

think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad

spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”

Then what? A woman soldier shouted:

Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?

I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.

__________

Translated by Fady Joudah

Neighing at the Slope


Poem No.: 98 النص العربي: لا يوجد




Horses' neighing at the slope. Downward or upward.

I prepare my portrait for my woman to hang on a wall when I die.

She says: Is there a wall to hang it on?

I say: We'll build a room for it. Where? In any house.

***

Horses' neighing at the slope. Downward or upward.

***

Does a thirty-year-old woman need a homeland where she might make a life?

Can I reach the summit of this rugged mountain? The slope is either an abyss

or a place of siege.

Midway it divides. It's a journey. Martyrs kill one another.

I prepare my portrait for my woman. When a new horse neighs in you, tear it up.

***

Horses' neighing at the slope. Upward, or upward.

They Would Love To See Me Dead


Poem No.: 99 النص العربي: لا يوجد




They would love to see me dead, so they say: He belongs to us, he is ours.

For twenty years I have heard their footsteps on the walls of the night.

They open no door, yet here they are now. I see three of them:

A poet, a killer, and a reader of books.

Will you have some wine? I asked.

Yes, they answered.

When do you plan to shoot me? I asked.

Take it easy, they answered.

They lined up their glasses all in a row and started singing for the people.

I asked: When will you begin my assassination?

Already done, they said ... Why did you send your shoes on ahead to your soul?

So it can wander the face of the earth, I said.

The earth is wickedly dark, so why is your poem so white?

Because my heart is teeming with thirty seas, I answered.

They asked: Why do you love French wine?

Because I ought to love the most beautiful women, I answered.

They asked: How would you like your death?

Blue, like stars pouring from a window—would you like more wine?

Yes, we'll drink, they said.

Please take your time. I want you to kill me slowly so I can write my last

poem to my heart's wife. They laughed, and took from me

only the words dedicated to my heart's wife.

from Four Personal Addresses


Poem No.: 100 النص العربي: لا يوجد




1. One square meter of prison.

***

It's the door, and beyond it is the paradise of the heart. Our things—and everything is ours—are interchangeable. And the door is a door, the door of metonymy, the door of legend. A door to keep September gentle. A door that invites fields to begin their

________

translated by Munir Akash and Caroline Forché

As He Walks Away


Poem No.: 128 النص العربي: لا يوجد




The enemy who drinks tea in our hovel

has a horse in smoke, a daughter with

thick eyebrow, brown eyes and long hair

braided over her shoulders

like a night of songs.

***

He's never without her picture

when he comes to drink our tea

but he forgets to tell us about her nightly chores

about a horse of ancient melodies

abandoned on a hilltop.

***

Relaxing in our shack, the enemy

slings his rifle over my grandfather's chair

eats our bread like any guest,

dozes off for a while on the wicker couch.

Then, as he stoops to pat our cat on the way out,

says:"Don't blame the victim."

"And who might that be?" we ask.

"Blood that won't dry in the night."

***

His coat-buttons flash as he walks away.

***

Good evening to you! Say hello to our well!

Say hello to our fig trees! Step gingerly

on our shadows in the barley fields.

Greet our pines on high. But please

don't leave the gate open at night.

And don't forget the horse's terror of airplanes.

And greet us there, if you have time.

***

That's what we want to say at the doorstep.

He hears it well enough,

but muffles it with a cough,

and waves it aside.

***

As long as the earth turns around itself inside us

the war will not end.

Let's be good then.

He asked us to be good while we're here.

He recites Yeats's poem about an Irish Airman:

"Those that I fight I don't hate,

Those that I guard I don't love."

Then he leaves our wooden ramshackle hut

and walks eighty meters to our old stone house on the edge of the plain.

***

Greet our house for us, stranger.

The coffee cups are the same.

Can you smell our fingers still on them?

Can you tell your daughter

with the braid and thick eyebrows

she has an absent friend

who wishes to visit her, to enter her mirror

and see his secret.

***

How was she able to trace his age in this place?

***

Say hello to her, if you

have time.

***

What we want to tell him

he hears well enough, but muffles with a cough

and waves aside.

***

His coat buttons flash

as he walks away.

___________________

Translated by Sargon Boulos

Jameel Bouthaina, and I


Poem No.: 136 النص العربي: لا يوجد




We grew older, Jameel Bouthaina and I, each

alone, in two separate eras . . .

It is time that does what sun

and wind do: it polishes us then kills us whenever

the mind bears the heart’s passion, or

whenever the heart reaches its wisdom

***

Jameel! does she grow old, like you, like me,

Bouthaina?

***

She grows old, my friend, outside the heart

in others’ eyes. But inside me

the gazelle bathes in the spring that pours out of her being

***

Is that her, or is that her image?

***

That’s her, my friend. Her flesh, her blood,

and her name. Timeless. She might stop me

tomorrow on her road to her yesterday

***

Did she love you, Jameel? Or did she like being a metaphor

in your songs, a pearl . . . whenever she stared

into your nights and welled up, she rose easterly as a moon

with a heart of stone?

***

It’s love, my friend, our chosen death

one passerby marrying the absolute in another . . .

No end for me, no beginning for me. No

Bouthaina for me or me for Bouthaina. This

is love, my friend. I wish I were

twenty doors younger than myself

***

for the air to be light on me, and for her side-profile

***

at night to be clearer than a mole

above her navel . . .

***

Did you seduce her, Jameel, contrary to what

the narrators have said about you, and did she seduce you?

***

I married her. We shook the heavens and they streamed

milk on our bread. Whenever I came to her my body

bloomed flower by flower, and my tomorrow spilled

its wine drop by drop into her jugs

***

Were you created for her, Jameel,

and will you remain for her?

***

I was ordered and tutored. I have no concern

for my spilled presence like water on her grape

skin. And no concern for the immortality

that will follow us like shepherd dogs.

I am only as Bouthaina created me

***

Would you explain love to me, Jameel,

to remember it one idea at a time?

***

People who know love best are the most perplexed,

you must burn, not to know yourself, but

to illuminate Bouthaina’s night . . .

***

Higher than the night, Jameel flew

and broke his crutches. And leaned into my ear

and whispered: If you see Bouthaina in another

woman, make of death, my friend,

a friend. And glitter over there, in Bouthaina’s

name, like the nûn in rhyme!

_______________________

Translated by Fady Joudah

خالد

مشكور اخي لوركا

يعطيك الف عافية

ز كل التحية الى شاعرنا الكبير محمود درويش

ابو خميس

مشكورر اخي لوركا علي ماقدمت

أمل المستقبل

مشكور لوركا على ما قدمت
وبارك الله فيك

أبو تراب

مشكور أخ لوركا على مجهودك
لكن لو وجد النص العربي لكان أفضل
تقبل تحياتي