THE ZIGGURAT BUILDERS

They were
the first dreamers
who embodied the shape
of a dream in clay:
a stairwell of prayers
that will scale
the heights.

They knew:
a stranger once
passed among them,
and disappeared.
His shade
will be redeemed
in the form
of a ziggurat -
this ship of the gods
whose figurehead
will rend the clouds.

And learned:
it is a sea of time, 
on whose shore
from time to time,
we might glimpse
an ancestor's 
figure in white,
who will nod to us

across a thousand years
and wait for his ship.
 
 
 

THE LEGEND OF AL-SAYYAB AND THE SILT

From the start, Al-Sayyab¹ knew
that the things we love
           are few: a face
shining under the rags
           in its tiny cradle
luminous like a loaf of bread.
Several women, kind
           like the nursemaids of legend
and a handful of silt
moist like a chronicle of the flood -
These kept pursuing him
               out of the apertures
                                of his memory,
the windows he saw in childhood
           opening for his gaze.
 

For these, he sang
       even as he burned
                     and waited on hospital beds
away from the water of Iraq.
                                For these.
He begged even the mud at the 
                                           bottom of a stream.
 And sang.

Al-Sayyab knew from the start:
a barefoot will lead only 
to jail or massacre, and poverty
                                           is the only devil
as long as the world in its splendour
or misery, is a banquet thrown
                                for  the others
                     in our name . . . 
And whenever he wrote the poem,
the hospital plunged like a raft
           down into the void.

Then, as night, that solicitous 
servant brought him
the halo of eternity, and death like a faceless 
dancer in the earth's last tavern
disrobed for his eyes -
                  Jaikur² turned
with all its orchards
           and all its mud
                      in the river of his blood
and he saw the Lord
at the bottom of Buwaib³.

_________

1  Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab (1926-1964) was a pioneering Iraqi poet who spent the last years of his life in hospitals, in Beirut, London, Kuwait.
2  Jaikur is the town where Al-Sayyab was born
3  Buwaib is the river that runs through Jaikur
 
 
 

O PLAYER IN THE SHADOWS

I play alone.
                An hour.
                                 Or two.
I spread the cards on the table.

When will you show up?
Player, all this luck is for you.
Appear.  I will stay up until dawn
           waiting for your sight.
To whom will I show my cards?
Without you, what meaning to my game?
I will play.  But first,
           what are the rules:  if I'm to win,
who might the loser be?
           if I'm the loser, who will win
                                            . . . what?

O player in the shadows,
this game will not reveal its secrets
           without  a price: a thousand
dinars for the one who will show his hand.
Another thousand for him
           who shall keep it concealed.

- Strange. What a game!
   in which no one can win, or lose.
- Yes.  And what a jackpot.  What stakes!
 
 
 

A KEY TO THE HOUSE

A man dreamt
           that he left
his city, one day, in a storm
that was bending the fields;
columns of dust rose at its approach 
on the outskirts of a hamlet 
that rode the wind, and wove 
around his feet.

A man dreamt
           that a woman
with a child in her arms
sang a song he knew 
from childhood
and kept repeating to himself
as he crossed the desert
as if it were
his only well.

But a voice warned him 
in the midst of his dream.
A darkness fell
           suddenly on the plain.

A bird soared out of a tree
whose abandoned bough
kept tipping at air -
           silence deepened 
until he could hear time
sneak past a dying orchard
light-footed as a fox or a quail.

Water shook and splintered
as he bent, in his thirst, to drink
and the river
           swept his reflection away
in its widening circles
while he tried to salvage
                      what was left
with his cupped hand, in a hurry now
for the sun
           had begun to sink
           like a magical windowpane
across the border
that he envisioned for so long.
And was crossing now.

Before anyone could call
his name, he turned and looked.
He left his suitcase
in the middle of the road.
From his hand that shuddered
           - slit by the only thing it held: the key 
           to his father's house -
hot drops of blood dribbled,
           and fell in the dust.

This is the line -
           here your first path
                      comes to an end
Rub the dust out of your eyes, 
and look: this land of the others,
                      where you shall tread.
 
 

These poems were translated by the author from a selection of published and unpublished poems and republished from Banipal No 12.