DELVING

The sea is a lexicon
Of blueness
Assiduously read by the sun
Your body, too, is a lexicon
Of my desires
Its first letter
Will take a lifetime

Beirut, April 2003
 
 

PHANTASMAGORIA II

Your lips
Are a pink butterfly
Flying
From one word
To another
I run after them
In gardens of silence

Cairo, June 2003
 
 

SIFTING

My eyes
Are two sieves
Sifting
Through piles of others
Searching for you

Cairo, August 2003
 
 

JUST ANOTHER EVENING 
(In Black and You)
 

1
Your voice floats
Like a sleepy narcissus
On the evening's water
And I am a shore
Thinking of drowning
 

2
Every touch
Is a white envelope
Hiding tens of letters
Also white
Penned by your nudity
About itself
 

3
Your shirt
Is an open envelope
Your breasts
Two letters
Always
About to arrive
 

4
Even the night's fingers
Whisper
As they think
Of undressing you
 
 

A SIP

When your fingers embrace
The waist of the glass 
A smile awakens
In the dream of a man
Asleep in a distant night

It's been a long day
He's blown his soul
Into many a glass

The jasmine wind on your wrist
Caresses his pillow
When your lips touch the tip of the glass
Thousands of wild horses begin to rush
In his veins
Their whinnying blends
With the wine raining from above
The nude women on horseback
Declare him a hedonistic prophet

But 
When you put the glass on the table
He wakes up
Looks at his watch -
In an hour
He will enter a new day
Like a long tunnel

Cairo, August 2003
 

The above poems have been published in Arabic on www.kikah.com and translated by the author. They are republished here from Banipal No 21.
 
 

STRINGS

1
The player's fingers climb
the musical scales
and carry me
to the clouds
then descend
followed by God
who weeps
and apologises
for everything

2
The strings of the oud
pull my soul
from the well of silence
fill my heart
with the sea's blueness
storm my branches
pluck me
scattering me far away
on an island
outside time
inside my heart

3
This umbilical chord
extends from my heart
to the banks of the Euphrates
I sever it every morning
but, at night,
nostalgia
mends it

4
A thread
that rains from the needle's eye
in a night
whose blackness
tires the candles
as they counts its minutes,
a thread used by a mother
to mend a shirt
that still remembers the scent
of the prisoner 
she's been waiting for
for eleven autumns
. . .
a shirt 
no one will ever wear

5
A shelf
in the heart's archives
where postponed deaths
are stacked
next to rumours 
about happiness

6
The border line
across the provinces 
of nostalgia
between a country 
that never was
and a country 
which will never be -
whenever it is pulled away
by imagination
there
history
brings it back
here

7
The sobbing of a man
as he clings to the thread
running from his fingers
towards a white kite
still soaring
in the skies of his childhood 
outside the cell
on his execution night

8
a silk thread 
sighs
and thinks of eloping
from a black bra
. . .
it is fatigued
and does not want to stop
the two breasts
from kissing

9
An invisible ray 
seizes my heart
the scent of a woman
who would be passing by me
twenty years from now
had she not died
in the last war

10
The last line
in a manuscript
whose burning
has been delayed
eight centuries

11
The migration route 
taken by a rare bird
in its last season 
before extinction

12
The shadow of the last palm tree
in a burning orchard
as its fronds comb
the wind's hair
and it is consoled 
by the sun

13
Perhaps 
the string is merely 
a string
consoling the trees
crucified in the body of the oud
or is it just yearning
for another string
crucified
in a distant oud

Cairo, April-June, 2003
 

Translated by the poet from his collection Mawshur Muballal bi'l-Hurub [A Prism: Wet with Wars]  Merit, Cairo, 2003.
 
 

WRINKLES ON THE WIND'S FOREHEAD

1

The wind is a blind mother
stumbling
over the corpses
no shrouds 
save the clouds
but the dogs 
are much faster
 

2
The moon is a graveyard
for light
the stars women
wailing
 

3
The wind was tired
from carrying the coffins
and leaned
against a palm tree
A satellite enquired:
"Where to now?"
the silence
in the wind's cane
murmured:
"Baghdad"
and the palm tree caught fire
 

4
The soldier's fingers scrape and scrabble,
like question marks
or curving sickles,
they search the belly of the wind
for weapons
. . .
nothing but smoke
and depleted uranium
 

5
How narrow is this strait
which sleeps
between two wars
but I must cross it
 

6
My heart is a stork
perched on a distant dome
in Baghdad
its nest made of bones
its sky 
of death
 

7
This is not the first time
myths wash their face
with our blood
Here they are
looking in horizon's mirror
as they don our bones
 

8
War salivates
Tyrants and historians pant
A wrinkle smiles
on the face of a child
who will play 
during a break
between wars
 

9
The Euphrates 
is a long procession
Cities pat its shoulders
as palm trees weep
 

10
The child plays
in time's garden
but war calls upon her
from inside:
Come on in!
 

11
The grave is a mirror
into which the child looks
and dreams:
when will I grow up
and be like my father
. . .
dead?
 

12
The Tigris and Euphrates
are two strings
in death's lute
and we are songs
. . . or fingers strumming
 

13
For two and a half wars
I've been here
in this room
whose window is a grave
that I'm afraid of opening 
There's a mirror on the wall
and when I stand before it
naked
my bones laugh
as the fingers of death
tickle the door
 

14
I place an ear
on the belly of this moment
I hear wailing
I place it on another moment
- the same!

Cairo, May-June, 2003
 
 

Translated by the poet
 

The Arabic original was published in the cultural supplement of an-Nahar newspaper, Beirut, August 2003. This translation is republished from Banipal No 18, Autumn 2003.