THE PROCESSIONS OF MARCH

Spring comes to this land every year, holding the keys, opening the door of salvation, closing the door of intention.  This time, it is a blacksmith who works his bellows; his assistant a youth, as if made of clay. Strange of spirit, he lost his way, landed in the street of the new processions, fatally wounded. Experience had knocked him down, the waters of knowledge extinguished his fire.

An assistant, on the path of processions, who sculpts lions and hyenas, foxes perched on their heads, to embody the image of a dragon.  A table of creation where lions of wisdom and fishes of knowledge come together and, purified by fire, a dragon sets the woods aflame.

The youth, fashioned of clay, came with an ancient soul.  He joined the procession with all his wounds. He awaits the passers-by with an extinguished lamp, and lets go of the treasures he carries as he approaches the flames. Those treasures bequeathed to him by the wise men who, saddened by his troubles, gave him their blessings and offered him advice: not to suffer the ages but rather to reside in his own time.  For he who doesn't becomes a stranger who imagines the land as merely two rivers that flood and drain according to the rules of fate. Everyone drowns once in water and dies once of thirst.

The drowned come to the  festival as ghosts, whose chains clang, whose swords swish as their tribal banners rush towards the gates of hell.  The youth, saddened by his times, opens his door.  He doesn't know how his lamp became lightless, how he gathered his seasons together. To whom will he offer his gifts, while the fires burn? And why has he come, this youth, to  this age?
 

1
He is the tightrope walker,
a phantom from that time,
with a weightless shadow, clinging to 
his ropes. He has seen  the ages,
and saw the Flood coming, 
then the clouds of mud
where he sought to hide.

2
A suspended harlequin
oblivious of earth and time.
Not really of what is old,
but ancient nevertheless.
Passing through clouds of stone and iron.
He is weighed down, feverish,
no hand to caress his forehead,
blood surging in his palms.

3
He squats, a tightrope walker
made of basalt, smote with an axe.
The hand of a Bedouin
from the desert missed him;
covered with rags, he counts his coins,
forgets the hurled stone.
(As the wind sweeps off his tent,
what glory, what past!)

4
He, the tightrope walker,
what volcano crater
did he tumble out from?
A carved stone,
a  spell full of wisdom.
A soldier from Ur.
A royal priest from Lagash
who waved to Sargon's armies
and pointed the way to the southern seas.

5
A harlequin made of basalt
lies in the dust, his forehead struck
by a fool's stone.
He counted the ages, his eyes
full of sadness, he who had come
to protect them
from the wolves.
To walk upon a rope of fire,
to glimpse Paradise in the distance
before Christ was baptized
or Mohammad had come.

6
He, the lame one,
who thought the ropes were tight -
he had missed his cue,
and now prepares the stage:
two armies set the fire ablaze
with incendiary stones. 
He fears this age and its legacy.
He dreads this time
and its traps, lest he lets
the ropes go slack 
and burn.
 

Berlin, March 2003
 
 

THE WOLF

 To Sargon Boulus

He who sleeps all the time - a wounded
wolf who left the pack. At midnight, for a while,
he meditates:  there is his hanging mask,
the thread of blood that runs through his desert,
and from the wind's very beginning, this howling
soul-sprouted, echoed by his days -
and what his days have done.

Under his eyelids, his land - mere illusion
of an ancient continent; he closes his eyes: lands
where blood has seeped;
a pond, and traces on ice.
The snow is here, on the chairs,
beneath the window through which a red moon
peers, and jackals call
across the ravaged waste of his mind.
Between one mask and another
he stretches his head to sleep.

What he sees 
are persons and things,
that metamorphose, enter the scene
holding oblations in their hands,
candles to lay on water,
to light up the time that was
and the time that is now.

Remembering in waves:
in the mountains the wild beasts roam 
where the villages are hidden -
the quails fly off,
the hunter crushes their eggs.

In his sleep he summons his folks:
people who exchange the bread
of life, people who buy fuel for their souls.
The traps laid for them.
Butchers sharpening their knives.
In his bed, phantoms of lambs sacrificed.
And thus, rituals are practised,
drums are beaten for the sake of forgiveness.
People wear their masks
and wolves howl.

Time that is old,
time that is new; he juggles it at midnight
howling for his land
smothered with ice.
He hangs his mask in the daytime
like a trophy, and in the night-wars,
between naps, he buries his claws
in the hearts of angels
and sniffs blood
on his hands.

Berlin, 1999

These poems were translated by Sargon Boulus and republished from Banipal No 17 and Banipal No 12 respectively