for 100 years.
I want to skip the problems
of the twenty-first century—
water pollution
nuclear war
capsized boats
that carry immigrants
away from their homelands.
I may miss important inventions
and new songs
and weekends
when people go out
on their dates
followed by one moon.
I may open my eyes for a moment
to take a glimpse of the universe in its beauty
and then close them again.
But what if my loved ones
surrounded me
and whispered in my ear
one by one?
I would wake up of course.
My Poem Will Not Save You
Remember the toddler lying face down
on the sand, and the waves gently receding
from his body as if a forgotten dream?
My poem will not turn him onto his back
and lift him up
to his feet
so he can run
into a familiar lap
like before.
I am sorry
my poem will not
block the shells
when they fall
onto a sleeping town,
will not stop the buildings
from collapsing
around their residents,
will not pick up the broken-leg flower
from under the shrapnel,
will not raise the dead.
My poem will not defuse
the bomb
in the public square.
It will soon explode
where the girl insists
that her father buy her gum.
My poem will not rush them
to leave the place
and ride the car
that will just miss the explosion.
Many mistakes in life
will not be corrected by my poem.
Questions will not be answered.
I am sorry
my poem will not save you.
My poem cannot return
all of your losses,
not even some of them,
and those who went far away
my poem won’t know how to bring them back
to their lovers.
I am sorry.
I don’t know why the birds
sing
during their crossings
over our ruins.
Their songs will not save us,
although, in the chilliest times,
they keep us warm,
and when we need to touch the soul
to know it’s not dead,
their songs
give us that touch.
Tablets
II
1
I close my eyes and see a dot.
It becomes a spot of light.
It grows into the size of a person
who moves into the distance
until it returns to a spot of light,
a dot.
2
Like communion bread
your words dissolve in my mouth
and never die.
3
I don’t care under which sky—
just sing your song till the end.
4
The bone-city I am choked by
is also salt
also sugar
also boiling water
in the kettle without a lid.
5
Ask not how many houses were built.
Ask how many residents remained in the houses.
6
The flame opens like a giant plant
swallowing them one by one
with their lost-and-found sheep.
7
She whose song
has no beginning
or end;
she whose voice
faded into stars and moons . . .
Where is she?
Where is she?
8
There are two types of dreams:
vertical and horizontal.
Tell me the shape of your dream
and I will tell you where you are from.
9
Fire and light
both sting.
We go to sleep when the other half
of the globe wakes up.
Night and day
crowded with dreams.
10
Your look
passes through me
like lightning.
11
The butterfly that flew a moment ago
over the killed ones
was a soul
searching for home.
12
Our time together
has ripened, now
smashed like berries.
13
Can your camera capture
fear in the eyes
of the mother sparrow, see
the broken eggs in her eyes?
14
A little air means so much for the bird.
In the air, a full world extends.
The clouds gather and then separate.
The leaves wave to each other.
For the bird, everything hangs in the air.
15
The pomegranate seeds
scattered with our steps
were not from heaven.
16
My paper boat that drifted into the river
with the world behind it
had a special note.
It may arrive one day,
albeit late,
all truths come late.
17
Dried leaves
over there:
our first yearnings.
18
The shoes by the door
will not fit them when they return.
19
She counts the pebbles by her fingers.
The other pebbles underwater
are losses outside her hands.
20
Specks of sand
fell down
from the fingers:
our people.
21
The sun reveals
a hole in the boat,
a glow in the fins
of fish still breathing.
22
The day and the night
divide our steps on the road
as they equally
divide the world.
23
I was born.
I write poetry.
I will die.
24
Her shadow
is still here
feeding the birds.
III
1
Like the turtle,
I walk everywhere
with my home on my back.
2
The mirror on the wall
doesn’t show any of the faces
that used to pass
in front of it.
3
The dead
act like the moon:
they leave the Earth behind
and move away.
4
Oh, little ants,
how you move forward
without looking back.
If I could only borrow your steps.
5
All of us are autumn leaves
ready to fall at any time.
6
The spider makes a home outside itself.
It doesn’t call it exile.
7
Forgotten
faces of the dead
as if we had only met once
through revolving doors.
8
I am not a pigeon
knowing my way home.
9
Just like that
they packed our green years
to feed a hungry sheep.
10
Of course you can’t see the word love.
I wrote it on water.
11
When the moon is full
it looks like a zero.
Life is round
at the end.
12
The grandfather left the country with one suitcase.
The father left with empty hands.
The son left with no hands.
13
No, I am not bored of you.
The moon, too, appears every day.
14
She drew her pain:
a colorful stone
settled deep inside the sea.
The fish pass by
and can’t touch it.
15
She was safe
inside her mother’s belly.
16
The lanterns know the value of night,
and are more patient
than the stars.
17
Those colorful flowers
over the mass graves
are the dead’s last words.
18
The Earth is so simple—
you can explain it with a tear or a laugh.
The Earth is so complicated—
you need a tear or a laugh
to explain it.
19
The number you see now
will inevitably change
with the next dice roll.
Life won’t show its faces
all at once.
20
I love you
in the singular
even though I use the plural,
both the regular and irregular plurals.
21
The sweet moment is over.
I spent an hour
thinking of that moment.
22
The butterfly brings pollen
with its little feet, and flies away.
The flower can’t follow it—
its leaves flutter,
and its crown grows wet
with tears.
23
Some of our tribal members
died in war, some
died regular deaths.
None of them died from joy.
24
That woman standing in the public square
is made of bronze.
She’s not for sale.
IV
1
I wanted to write an epic about suffering,
but when I found a tendril
of her hair among the ruins
of her mud house
I found my epic there.
2
I didn’t sleep last night.
It was as if the night
itself hid in the morning coffee.
3
Her life is a game of snakes and ladders
sent relentlessly back to square one,
but whose life isn’t like this? She takes
a breath and throws the dice again.
4
The city glitters below
the airplane window, not because
of the bones and skulls scattered
under the sun, but the view
through the frosted porthole.
5
She died, and time changed
for those she loved most,
but her watch kept ticking.
6
A god carried the burdens
until the weight persuaded him
to transfer them to man:
the new suffering god.
7
The map of Iraq looks like a mitten
and so does the map of Michigan—
a match I made by chance.
8
If you can’t save people
at least don’t hate them.
9
Her bubbling annoys me—
I can’t understand a word she says.
So what if I toss her from the aquarium?
So what if I spill her new world
with this nasty immigrant fish?
10
The city’s innumerable lights
turning on and off remind us
we are born to arrive
as we are born to leave.
11
The handkerchiefs are theirs,
but the tears are ours.
12
Women running barefoot.
Behind them, stars falling from the sky.
13
So strange
that in my dream of us
you were also a dream.
14
He said to me: You are in my eyes.
Now when he sleeps,
his eyelids cover me.
15
Gilgamesh stopped wishing
for immortality,
for only in death could he be certain
of seeing his friend Enkidu again.
16
Some say love means
putting all your eggs
in one basket.
If they all break,
can the basket remain intact?
17
The homeless are not afraid
to miss something.
The world passes before their eyes
as clouds pass over rushing cars
pigeons miss some of the seeds
on the road and step away.
Yet only the homeless know
what it means to have a home
and to return to it.
18
The wind and rain
batter us
without discrimination.
in the eyes of the storm.
19
When I was broken into fragments
you puzzled me
back together
piece by piece.
I no longer fear
being broken
at any moment.
20
Freezing in the mountains
without blankets or food,
and all they heard was
no news is good news.
21
Their stories didn’t kill me
but I would die if I didn’t
tell them to you.
22
Before killing them
they collected their personal effects.
Their cell phones are all ringing
in the box.
23
We are not upset when
the grass dies. We know
it will come back
in a season or two.
The dead don’t come back
but they appear every time
in the greenness of the grass.
24
If yearning encircles us,
what does it mean?
That a circle has no beginning
and no end?
V
1
Light falls from her voice
and I try to catch it as the last
light of the day fades . . .
But there is no form to touch,
no pain to trace.
2
Are dreams
taking their seats
on the night train?
3
She recites a list of wishes
to keep him from dying.
4
The truth lands like a kiss—
sometimes like a mosquito,
sometimes like a lantern.
5
Your coffee-colored skin
awakens me to the world.
6
We have only one minute
and I love you.
7
All children are poets
until they quit the habit
of reaching for butterflies
that are not there.
8
The moment you thought you lost me,
you saw me clearly
with all of my flowers,
even the dried ones.
9
If you pronounce all letters
and vowels at once,
you would hear their names
falling drop by drop
with the rain.
10
We carved
our ancestral trees into boats.
The boats sailed into harbors
that looked safe from afar.
11
Trees talk to each other
like old friends
and don’t like to be interrupted.
They follow anyone who
cuts one of them,
turning that person
into a lonely cut branch.
Is this why in Arabic
we say “cut of a tree”
when we mean
“having no one”?
12
The way roots hide
under trees—
there are secrets,
faces, and wind
behind the colors
in Rothko’s untitled canvases.
13
Will the sea forget its waves,
as caves forgot us?
14
Back when there was no language
they walked until sunset
carrying red leaves
like words to remember.
15
It’s true that pain
is like air, available
everywhere,
but we each feel
our pain hurts the most.
16
So many of them died
under stars
that don’t know their names.
17
If she just survived with me.
18
A flame dims in the fireplace,
a day slips quietly away from the calendar,
and Fairuz sings, “They say love kills time,
and they also say time kills love.”
19