3 poems
Destiny
Far away
at the edge of the earth a man stands
and leans over to stare into his abyss
Then comes the ox of memories
and butts him into the emptiness
The Heroism of a Thread
My enemy will pass after I do
Please help him
Provide his camp with dogs and fresh dates
Open the gate of wind for his soldiers
I don’t mind
I have passed through the narrow opening
I laugh
because the one behind me is . . . an elephant
Cinema
In the cinema there is a lot of killing
The screen is full of imaginary blood
The murderer throws his gloves into the onlooker’s face and fear is provoked by sound effects
from a drum in a symphony of pistols
Killing
has become as necessary in the cinema
as in life
Translated by Issa J Boullata
White Shame
Translated by Joseph Zeidan
The sentence was uttered in its entirety
Why did not you believe it
The sentence?
It just passed in front of you
Or you are the one who passed in front of it
It just passed by in front of you
Or you are the one who passed by it. It does not matter
The sentence?
Do you recall that it
Stung you in the spinal cord?
Do you recall?
Do you recall the love
And the word “clarity”
And the man’s first scream and it was: In the name of the breast in the mother
Yes
And then they told you: This is the world
And said: Be shattered for the sake of the end
Yes
Do you recall
It is the fault that the indifference repeats
It is the disease
It is the white shame
Take your shoes and come
Come light, lighter than your shadow
Otherwise come at night
And get into repetition
It is the fault
It is the disease renewing itself
In your very health
Do This
Translated by Joseph Zeidan
Take a red rag .. Place it on your enemies’ heads
And then watch the color turn into a symbol
Then, a year later
Beautify the wall with holes
And let the air free
Tell the woman: Love is a buried mirror
Love is evenness
And from time to time
Try to alter the chess of symbols
Or toss in order to hit the emptiness
Perhaps, while tossing, you will split the target
And dismantle the scuffle of two enemies
Sliding
Translated by Joseph Zeidan
I threw half my dreams into the garbage
I put on a shirt and went out
I wandered in the wounded streets
While my statue is with me
I pulled the thread dangling
From the cloud of vision
And then the angels glided
And my entire homeland
Became moistened with dreams
Strange Circles
Translated by Joseph Zeidan
Then, that was my alienation
To recover the remainders of dignity
Rising above the idea of regret
Jumping with the deceived
Dancing around him
And around myself
Coming while inflicted with absence
Within my self every insight
Is destroyed by doubt
Every pleasure seizes its location
And nothing remains for the body
Except the cause of its escape
I mean here is the cause of the stranger
I describe whomever I describe
The man who piles up the workers
In the shape of a pyramid
The dry woman at the stream
The lame dog at the bus stop
And my mother
And talks about tyranny
Except when I wipe out another one
I reclaim from the stranger
His addresses and ignorance
I treat the adversary harshly
While wrapped with confrontation
But the stranger pulls me by my clothes
To cross the water
To peep on the contrast of meaning
And believe the game around us
So I grabbed the memories of others
I was infatuated and violated my blood
I told the stranger that he owns all the earth
They climbed the ladders and he was with them
They shook the big idol, and he was with them
We were plowing the lake called heart
And leaning against our differences
Together
I walked with the truth while I was alien to it
In believed the road when it
Seduced me with the end
I believed my father
The dogs and the secular people
Why did I come to the place of my farewell?
How did the fire defeat the yearning?
How did my friends evaporate like artificial smoke?
My friends, I take refuge in them
But the stranger decides to trade his mask with me
The raven jokes with the flock of sea gulls
The judges joke with justice
Poking it with a stick
The clown jokes with gravity
Attaching himself to the ceiling
The young girl jokes with her breast
The stranger jokes with death
Receiving and exchanging
The currency of adventure
What is the use of your far away screaming, stranger?
Sanctify your conditions
And follow the hedgehog’s advice
Barefooted they bury you
If you hit them with your shoes
You, who talked to them about
The nature of absence and its unknown spheres
About the relationship between body and door
And the rotation of man around the sun
What does your screaming say
Except this whisper?
Come closer, stranger
We will sit down like statues for a moment
We will sit closer to ourselves
Like the statues
A rock facing a rock
Confused in the homelands
One half of me is departure
The other half is a road
I severe my language
And my oath is violated
I recited songs until my tongue
Turned yellow
And the rug of words slipped
From my mouth
I said;
Alienation is the strength of the weak
So all slipped from my mouth
To whom did you return to plead, stranger?
The exiles dissected you rib by rib
Your opinion got twisted
And the directions of your face became inverted
The eternity that you challenge
Threw you finally to pond of nihility
So take your heart and match
Stab it with treachery
Do not stay in the place
Of your sale
I walk and its shadows follow me
A man is close to his forties
A man standing as if in a circle
He gave my descriptions
And he started turning around
Betting on the tragedy
Transient Love
Translated by Joseph Zeidan
Destiny that brought us together
Divided us in the room
Traveled in our manners
Like bad blood
Rebelled
And was thrown back
And broke when we hugged
We were a pair of scissors
And a spot of blood
Caused by an unknown knife
A kiss originally a stab
And a hanged capital
And an Arabism
Dispelled by the barbarism of silence
And between us the fire
And the yellow wood of dignity
And the jam of the holiday
And the stubbornness of the road
All of them
Tied to the thread of joy
The Time of the Dry Human
Translated by Dr. Omnia Amin
Numbers crawled and letters climbed the mountain
The wind spoke from far away, fluttering with black and white wings
Man gained wisdom from the water and invented fire
Woman took the moon, hid it in her dreams, slept and died
At dawn with every beat
The clock awakens and continues in the eternal moment.
***
Life plays with human puppets
In a cave,
In a villa
It matters not
The human child suckles on the broom and grows
The snake of truth slips around his ears, as with Socrates
Who kissed the snake before the judges
And told the arrow: “Pay no attention to the limp target.”
***
He lived in her hands as she clapped.
Her hands are life and death.
She is Earth
The dull see her as a ring on a magician’s hand
The wise see a blissful existence
The steadfast slip like a wave of illusion from her bow
Like the yellowing autumn leaves which loose their grip
So when spring comes nothing remains on the branches
Except memories in an orphaned nest,
The bird of livelihood, landing among withered fruit
And the rose of time sprouting from a child’s hand.
***
Centuries run heavy in the clay of the future
Time is a sword in the shield of flesh
Sand a sponge for overflowing blood
Those at the four corners got drunk while the one in the middle fasted
He spat out words and riddles .
And said: “Give me a sheet of paper and I will write the sea
Give me the compass of the blind in the night,
The candle of rain
And the boat holed by sabotage.”
The centuries obeyed him
Time listened to time
While the man changed with the seasons and his silence became hoarse
***
A thousand years passed
As the wise hand brushed the bold statue,
And the cold hand warmed itself on warm blood.
A thousand years only
As the labyrinth of departure was built in the desert
And the people sat to watch the lightning and called it The Sword
Then rose,
Pushed the mountains and threw them in the sea,
Burned poets and foxes in the middle of public squares.
***
A thousand years only
As beasts ran after pleasures
And torture became the carriage of release for the barefoot
Then shoes appeared
And hooves walked on burnt paper.
While on the back of time
Human nails grew
***
“I am the orphan of the spring,” said the dry human.
“Let me then dwell in the deserts
Let the stone be a pillow for the wounded
and the cloud, the tent of eternity.
Here on the sand I will plant the tree of the half-moon
And penetrate the smoke of civilizations with it, ecstatic and triumphant.
I left the room of the past, swept it and locked it.
I held a thousand new words without an echo.
My face is not a mirror so why should I fear where I head?
Here, on the sand, I will split the “B” of boldness
Losing hope as I chase the circles of meanings
Here, where time is reflected in a mirror behind me,
I think I’ll break it
And free all the shadows from following the sun.”
Technology
Translated by Dr. Omnia Amin
The pigeon spoke in the laboratory and said:
“Freedom is to rid yourself of belonging to the Earth.”
The pigeon spoke;
We monitored its beak with our equipment and deciphered the language of its pecking
Today: Computers are carrier pigeons
The Internet: The book of life for our future dead
People swim on their backs in knowledge
Departure is an open word and means no communication
The heart of the wind is empty
Fire in the beard of hope
And snow on feathers.
When Medicine is Useless
Translated by Dr. Omnia Amin
Medicine is like a shirt
And disease, a blank message
In hospital all the sheets are stained with Arab blood
Nurses are violets in a trance
Medicine is black
And the patient cannot remember how his memories were wounded
On Doors
Translated by Raphael Cohen
A carpenter made a door. He carved it skillfully, ornamented it, decorated it, varnished it and polished it with oil. But as soon as he had hung it at the front of the house, the door marked a forbidden zone that he wasn’t allowed to approach. It became the divider between the secret, mysterious interior and the visible, public exterior. The carpenter was tortured because he made the door and now cannot pass through it to one he loves.
Doors in the Emirates have changed over the last thirty years, as has their function. In the past, doors were left open all day and only shut at night. Children in family neighbourhoods would be in and out of their friends’ and relatives’ houses without needing to ask. Adults never looked into houses when the door was open, and if someone went and knocked on a door, he would stand to one side not directly in front, a pleasing social habit to respect privacy. Of course, none of that happens now. The houses have changed: walls have gone up, doors are closed all day long. The neighbour’s cat no longer slips underneath; birds no longer find a perch in the heat.
There are many symbolic doors. First of all is the mother’s womb we pass through to life, expelled from innocent paradise to desolate chaos, chasing after existential questions. The final door is the grave, the mouth of the earth which, at the fateful moment, gapes for us to enter – a bolus rapidly swallowed up by time. The mouth is the doorway to speech; speech the gateway to meaning and questions; questions the portal to infinity.
* * *
In our Arab life, there are thousands of locked doors, big and small, but the biggest one of all is the doorway to freedom that opens from the heart and mind. At this door, thousands of dogs, executioners and murderers stand guard to prevent thought, hunt down words, slit truth’s throat and scourge every true human expression. They live among us, and we see their effects everyday everywhere: in the newspaper columns that deceive themselves; in the curl of a newscaster’s lip when he reads a report he knows is false; in the silence of a poet ignored on the pavement of fear; in the despair of minds ossified in skulls; in the word ‘no’ when it is crammed into generations that it means‘yes’.
* * *
For man to realise the deep meanings of the door, first he must try to pause on the threshold, not entering or leaving.
Hakeem the Wise sat on a boulder and wrote the following lines:
However big the lock, it can easily be broken.
Keys still work even when covered in rust.
The thief hates the door more than the wall.
People’s hearts are easily accessed through the doorway of love.
The Stations of Hakeem
Translated by Raphael Cohen
The first station
Hakeem the Wise used to sit on a boulder in a far-off village, addressing the people on virtue, morality and the forsaking of worldly pleasure. But the inhabitants, together with their wise man, abandoned the villages years ago and settled in the suburbs, dazzled by the neon lights of the night and the mixed, hybrid forms of incomers from all over the Earth seeking wealth, fame and status. But after five years of contemplating the city, its people and its architecture, Hakeem the Wise wrote the following note:
The greatest city in the world is a sheet of paper
The greatest lighthouse is the pen
The greatest temple is labour
The greatest grave is effacement
The greatest street is a line
The greatest vehicle is to look
The greatest television is dreaming
The greatest radio is silence
The second station
An ordinary man in the city was seeking the essence of his individuality, so he went into isolation in a far-off village where he contemplated the meaning of the cycle of the moon, the twinkling of stars in the dark nights, the whistling of the wind blowing from the north, the murmurings from behind the hill that nobody understood. After five years the big-city man became wise in the small village and addressed the people:
The greatest ink is rain
The greatest labour is meditation
But the inhabitants had wearied of the words of the wise. So they picked him up and threw him into the sea. Afterwards their lives were peace and quiet, not disturbed by ringing speeches or hollow words.
The third station
Hakeem the Wise abandoned the village and the city and chose to dwell alone, fasting, in a cave beyond a far-off mountain. After five years of total isolation, he realised that understanding the world begins with silence and remoteness from others. Only then is the secret of life gradually revealed and disclosed. Before he died Hakeem the Wise wrote on the wall of his cave:
In being alone lies your perfection
Close your eyes to see infinity
Listen to your core to hear the universe echo
Cleanse your mind of every thought, black or white
It’s an illusion to believe that your homeland is this minor world,
forgetting, like the rest,
that your greater homeland is all creation.
Night: The Veil of Veiling
This life, if they decorated it with a thousand crowns and said, Take it as a wedding gift, never to give back,
What would you do with it when you saw the eyes of houris amid walls with soldiers and patrols between you and them?
Should the wind blow angry on an evil day, how would you protect your papers and your hat?
The sea that seduced you onto the soft wave yesterday,
How do you know it won't cast you far out in its moment of passion?
And this night that you used to call the Veil of Veiling,
How will you pass it if it grows long followed by no sun, the vanity of its darkness unbroken by a crescent?
***
The beginning is born when you allow others to give you a name, but afterwards,
When you leave them and set out searching for your meaning,
The mirror will call you a liar even after you give it a thousand names.
The door that you slammed after going out will debar you.
You will have to cross the river twenty times without knowing where is its mouth, where goes its course.
If you sleep secure under the travellers' tree, no one will find you in the morning
Because you will then have reached your gyration's zenith, placing your foot on the board of the merciless question.
What taste in a life that ends in death?
How to flee something to which you run?
No flight from the labyrinth even where the land is barren and flat.
No escape from a destiny you know will be meeting you.
***
This leaf, if they spread it in your way and said, Tread on it and we shall follow your step, and one day shall find you,
Would you travel in the plenty of its whiteness, as you wished, to the light?
Will you make your blood red ink and with it inscribe the colour of your destiny, standing and crying before all: I'm free?
And how is a free one to see the star sparkling in a distant sky when he stretches his hand to it to hold only space?
How is a man to hold a statue made of air and say, This is my beloved, and then embrace her in public, without someone taking him to the mad-room?
All the leaves that were trodden by freedom lovers and lunatics, who drew on them steps of glory, would in the end wither and yellow to be swept by the autumn to nobody knows where.
No ink will last except that which you forge of the sun's gold, and use to write on some honest wall that you were once something of a human being.
Whoever chooses to disappear in the light will not care later if it is black or white.
It no longer matters to him if he loses life, so long as he has gained eternity and lived it, even if it is but a fluttering white mote.
***
This body, if they injected with serums that made you tall with legs that could cross the sea and hands that could grab the sun and moon: an orange in the right and a pearl in the left,
Would your fear of the earth's scorpions go away?
Would you sleep secure if you rested your head on a mountain in the east and dangled your feet off an edge in the west?
Would you rest knowing that the night between the two easts is longer than long,
With sharpened spears and poisoned arrows?
And should this body free itself of its weight and its legacy to stand,
Would it then wrangle with the strong, beating them in duels?
***
Take this heart, dough for your break.
Maybe your fire will make it whole.
If love's colour is red
They said of love's colour: Red,
Not knowing that the nights overflew with silver when they saw you, a full moon.
I said, Love is white.
The seagull was the messenger between our two ships while our censors slept in their drowning.
The clear cloud was the page on which we wrote our secrets: you printed on it the kiss of one in love, I read out of it the sound of your heart.
Then we travelled together towards the sun, the wind whispered to us. It said love was the colour of a halo above the two of us.
If we looked at the sea, love was blue.
If nostalgia's caravans carried us through the desert, love was golden.
***
They said of love's jealousy, It's fatal,
Not knowing that your eyes saw nothing in the distance except a dream in which I ran, bearing my rose and my book.
Every word I inscribe in the mirage becomes your name, whose false pursuers have grown tired trailing, their horses languishing as they perished on your trail.
All that remains of the race to catch you is my step, my panting.
I cross the earth crawling, but I am the first to get there.
They cross the sea running, but they are drowned.
How can I be jealous of those who are dead to your eyes?
How can you be jealous
When all the women of the world are the shadows of your shadow when you dawn, your face the perpetual sunrise of my visions?
***
They said of love's separation, An anguish.
But not once have I drawn away and not see you, a face that emerges smiling out of every mirror.
In the distant countries where the cold bites, longing for you was my warmth.
In the cities of fear which I crossed challenging the fates of cowards, your eyes were the sea of resolution.
Not once was I hit by anguish, with the picture of your soul emblazoned on my heart.
You come from every direction, free and true in love, and the siege of me breaks.
O Wings of the Soul, I saw you at airports, a promise that will always be fulfilled,
I inhaled your scent at ports of arrival,
And I read the meaning of yearning on the sails of the ships that set off every day in search of a dock near your sea, not knowing that your sea is all the universe.
***
They said of love's nest, A cage.
But I was free when I cast the world behind me, entered through your door and closed it in the face of all claimants.
Bliss in this world is nothing but the soul's closeness to its origin,
complete dissolution in the beloved, followed by evanescence.
I have thrown my destiny into the light, what does it matter if we perish together.
My self that was constrained by all space is free in the space of your soul,
The doors of time opening up to it, for there is no beginning nor end in which we are not both there, entwined.
***
They said love's symbol is a flower,
Not knowing that the origin of flowers in all the world is your scent.
O Flower of Colours in Eden, I saw the grass that your feet trod grow tall and vain with life.
I saw the thorns scratching me mildly, the river calling out for your step to purify it of the ennui of the years, so it could travel cheerfully to the sea.
Every flower turns into the biography of your breath, all the butterflies are the songs of your lips and the whole world, should you call it, would come as a tune, a wedding song on its mouth.
***
They said love is a false dream,
An illusion, a trap, a fishnet, a fisherman,
Not knowing that I am the sea.
And the sea does not drown
Except in the eyes of a lover who is earth
And is all the countries.
Corona... the black hole of our existence
She is the old earth
Tumbling down on a slope like a jar of clay
And soon she will hit the emerging rock
However, we will not die
We move apart but we do not separate
We cry when lovers leave, goodbye
We become happy, our children are coming
They are born bald like small moons
Lighting up the sadness of this planet
Goodbye…
Death wore the sprinter's shoes
And started running faster than our dreams
But he is not as strong as us in holding a long breath
Then, fear arrived
Hidden in the dark cloud’s saliva
But its black rain mixed with the tears of all nurses
The souls that rose up to the sky,
We saw them as kites that were let go by the hands of their holders
And here we are, waving to them behind closed windows
Leave in peace. We soon will be in peace
Look
In this war,
The doctor is the general with a white military uniform
With his gun as the syringe
Empty streets are formula racetracks for ambulances
Tanks fire bombs of chlorine on closed stores
And we
Like sunflowers
Enter the seclusion of the night at 8pm
In it, we repeat our tormented question
“What is happening?”
She is the old earth
Tumbling down a slope like a crystal ball
And soon, she will hit the rock
For the first time,
Hospitals are airports to the after life
Supermarkets represent hunger
No birthday celebrations in the limos
No group prayers
It’s like the person has to face God alone
It’s like warming up for the upcoming last day
People singing on balconies: glory to life
Pilots get to know the land again
Love stories born in isolated wards. Stories of betrayal too.
Mass burials and cremations of corpses wrapped in plastic
What is happening?
Is the old earth shaking off her worn out dress?
Are the trees taking her to the river of the beginning,
To be pregnant with the truth
And feed the pens with her ink through her sagging breasts?
Or is it the dealers who ignite a fire in the forest
And sleep ignorant of her sparks?
For the first time,
Pull your hand away from mine, to unite
Cover your face. You are only real with a mask
And you my love,
Extend your gloved hand
I will place the ring of love on its finger
The police are busy washing the city with soap
Thieves are trapped in the idea of repent
And you my love are asking:
Why didn’t the weather lady predict this empty storm?
And I answered: yes
Yes, we separated religion from politics
And now, we must separate science from politics
And tomorrow,
We must separate fire from politics
For the sake of this old earth
The earth that waited a billion years in her white dress
But the wedding hasn’t happened yet
The earth, every time she went to the toilet,
A civilization fell and another rose
And the weak people
Eaters of deer’s, pigeons, locusts and dogs
Even if they listened to this wise lesson,
They wouldn’t comprehend it
In the end, their fate is to eat one another
***
In a stylish suit, I greeted year 2020
Impressed by its numerical shape
That appear as two swans swimming peacefully in the lake of time
Yet, when I jumped on its fast train - it stopped
Then,
Wings of planes became paralysed
Illusory deaths of imagined cinematic heroes
A mass escape of English Premier League players
And nobody wanted their jerseys thrown on the ground
In Greece,
A woman gives birth to a dead boy on Socrates grave
In red China,
A farmer opens Confucian’s cemetery, leaving it for the bats to swarm in
And everyone in America is left holding a rifle
It is the season of hunting mirrors
It is the emptiness inside you meeting the emptiness outside you
And they get to know each other muzzle to muzzle
And you, my love
Climb over the wall of fear. You will find me waiting
And you, my old grandfather
Cough as you were coughing everyday
The rhythm of your damaged lungs is a euphoria for me
Nothing is left but our shadows
And the faces of friends - we talk to their pictures
It is a holiday for our senses, spending it on phone screens
It is the old earth
Bored of sitting on her rotten egg
Her egg that scientists thought was a white blood cell
Her egg that war generals thought was a red blood cell
So they fought
And we fell victim to this colour blindness
We can’t distinguish businessmen from fishermen
Nor the female teachers from sellers of copy watches
Prisons opened as houses imprisoned their owners
Schools closed
And its guards returned to their villages
We then saw the medicine
Which usually is a rich man
Showing us the empty pockets of his silk pants
So, which lie should we believe?
The mouth of the news presenter or her silicone chest?
The presidents of first-world countries or our mothers?
Everyone is talking about a deadly virus
About the cosmic tampering and its spread
About the late adolescence of the angel of death
Many numbers died
That is what is said in the daily pandemic meter
Italy cried and Casanova disappeared from its streets
It is like destiny
Is playing chess against wind to defeat water
It is like forgotten history found its lost shoes
And decided to walk towards us
Us, the sitters
In the peace of civilization
Clappers of the eternity circus
We were afraid of the mountain sneezing its lava
We became fearful of the monkeys drool in the laboratory
Me. Still an ATM card in the doctor's eyes
Still a guilty case in the lawyer’s mind
I receive life insurance offers more than my car
So, how will they let me die with the dust of an atom?
Who will be there to attend the earth’s wedding after me?
The earth
The helium balloon which escaped from its child’s hands
The earth
A green watermelon in the hands of a unprofessional basketball player
Everybody is waiting for him to shoot it
In the black hole of our existence
***
It is the year of corona
No movement appears on the surveillance cameras watching the world
Angels have gathered on the rooftops of buildings with no work to do
School buses abandoned in junkyards
Occupied by monkeys from forests
We do not see death
But we hear its voice loudly in this silence
Poets search for the truth in their empty drawers
My mother says: have honey and lemon,
I cannot handle seeing you infected like the queen of Britain
My friend Julio from Madrid lost his three aunts
We heard a sad thunder from the sky over Europe
Cloud after cloud
The artist painted the sky with wings of crows
Tear after tear
The DJ mixed a messy melody and called it: “The shriek of hope”
Here is humanity laughing at its sorrow
Here are racehorses from east and west
Clashing on the line of the equator
And the people. For the first time,
Realized that a draw is a win for everyone
Corona said: look deeply inside the emptiness, you will see me
Once as a glass barrier between yourself and the rest of the world
And once as a form of your fear of nothing
If you sit alone,
Take off your black and white glasses
Stretch your neck out the window and yell: enough
The old earth is choking on its muzzle
The branches of trees cannot wear gloves forever
The bird of freedom left its nest, searching for a cage
Now
They say Germany is sick by weakness!
And its dental clinics treat bites of regret
Now
Poets in New York are donating their poems
To be burnt as coal
For trains carrying dead bodies
It is the year of corona
Storms of dust pollinating seeds of death
The cough of the world. It now has asthma
Let us hope and wait my love
The Divine, how will he respond to the prayers for him?
Patience, is it better than antidepressant pills?
Forgetfulness, will it wash our streets tomorrow?
Or is it just the old earth
Getting her cosmic period
Changing her blood, feathers, skin and people
While she is tumbling in the space of eternity
Kicked around on the open playground of the universe?