Like the rest of the desert, space is rolled back from time
A distance sufficient for the poem to explode. Isma’il would
Descend among us by night, and sing: ‘O stranger,
I am the stranger and you from me, O stranger!’
The desert roams in the words and the words ignore the power
Of things. Return, O Oud… with what is lost and sacrifice me
On it, from far off to far off
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
All Things will begin anew
*
Meaning travels with us… we fly from ledge to
Marble ledge. And race between two blue chasms.
It is not our dreams that are awake, nor the guards of this place
Leave Isma’il’s space. There is no earth there
And no sky. A common joy touched us before
The Limbo of two strings. Isma’il… sing
For us so that everything becomes possible, close to existence
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
All things will begin anew
*
In Isma’il’s Oud the Sumerian wedding is raised
To the extremities of the sword. There is no non-existence there
And no existence. We have been touched by a lust to create:
From one string there flows water. From two strings fire is ignited.
From the three of them flashes forth Woman/Being/
Revelation. Sing, Isma’il, for meaning a bird hovers
At dusk over Athena between two dates…
Sing a funeral on a celebration day
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
All things will begin anew
*
Under the poem: the strange horses pass over. The wagons
Pass over the backs of the prisoners. Under it pass
Oblivion and the Hyksos. There pass the lords of the time,
The philosophers, Imru’ al’Qais, grieving for a morrow
Cast down at Caesar’s gates. They all pass under
The poem. The contemporary Past, like Timur Lenk,
Passes under it. The prophets are there, they also pass under
And hearken to Isma’il’s voice, as he sings: O stranger,
I am the stranger, I am like you, O stranger to this house,
Return… O Oud bringing what is lost, and sacrifice me on yourself,
Vein to vein
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
All things will begin anew
The Strangers’ Walk
I know the house from the sage bush. The first of
The windows leans out towards the butterflies… blue…
Red. I know the line of clouds, and at which
Well the village women will wait in summer. I know
What the dove says as it lays its eggs on the muzzle
Of the rifle. I know who opens the door to the jasmine
Which opens our dreams in to the evening’s guests.
*
The strangers’ carriage has not yet arrived
*
No one has come. So leave me there, just as
You leave greeting at the door of the house. For me
Or for another, and pay no attention to who will hear it
First. And leave me there a word for myself:
Was I alone ‘alone as the soul in
A body’? When you said one day: I love you both,
You and the water. Water gleamed in everything,
Like a guitar which had given itself to weeping!
*
The strangers’ guitar has not yet arrived
*
Let us be kind! Take me to the sea at
Sunset so that I may hear what the sea says to you
When it returns to itself peacefully, peacefully.
I shall not change myself. I shall hide myself in a wave
And say: Take me to the sea again. That is what
Those who fear do to themselves: they go to
The sea when they are tormented by a star that has burnt itself in the sky
*
The stranger’s song has not yet arrived
*
I know the house by the fluttering kerchiefs. The first pigeon
That laments on my shoulders. And beneath the sky
Of the Gospels a child is rushing for no reason. The water rushes,
And the cypress rushes, and the breeze rushes in
The breeze and the earth rushes in itself. I said:
Do not hasten to leave the house. There is nothing
To prevent this place from waiting awhile
Here, until you put on the day dress and pull on
The shoes of air
*
The strangers’ legend has not yet arrived
*
No one has come. So leave me there, as
You leave the tale in anyone who sees you, and weeps
And rushes off in himself, of his own happiness:
How much I love you! How much you are you! and intimidated by his own soul:
There is no I now, but she is now in me. No she, but I am in her fragility. How I fear
For my dream, lest it see a dream that is not she at
The end of this song…
*
No one has come
Perhaps the strangers have missed the way
To the strangers’ walk!
Raven’s Ink
You have a retreat in the solitude of the carob trees,
O dark-voiced sunset bells! What
Do they want from you now? You sought
Adam’s garden, so that the sullen killer might conceal his brother,
And were locked up in yourself
When the dead man was opened up at his large
And you took yourself off to your own affairs: as absence takes itself off
To its own many preoccupation. So, be
Awake. Raven, our resurrection will be postponed!
*
There is no night sufficient for us to dream twice. There is one
Gate to our heaven. Whence comes our end?
We are the offspring of the beginning. We see only
The beginning, so unite with the weather-side of your night, as a diviner
Preaches void what the human void leaves behind it:
The eternal echo around you…
You stand accused of what is in us. This is the first
Blood of our race before you. Leave
Cabel’s new house.
As the mirage leaves
The ink of your feathers, O Raven
*
For me there is a retreat in the night of your voice… for me an absence
Rushing between the shadow that binds me.
So I bind the bull’s horn. The unseen drives me, I drive it
It raises me and I raise it to the ghost that hangs like
A ripe aubergine. Are you then? And what
Do they want now from us after they have stolen my words from
Your words, then slept upright in my dream
On spears. I was not a ghost that they should walk
In my footsteps. Be my second brother:
I am Abel, the dust returns me
To you as a carob tree, so that you may perch on my branch, O Raven
*
I am you in words. One book unites us.
The ashes that lie on you are mine,
In the shadow we were merely two witnesses, two victims
Two poems
Two poems
About Nature, while desolation concludes its feast
*
The Qur’an shall enlighten you:
‘Then God sent a raven who scratched the ground.
To show him how to hide the shame of his brother.
“Woe is me!” said he; “Was I not even able to be as this raven?”’
The Qur’an shall enlighten you,
So search about for our resurrection, and hover, O Raven!
The Tatars’ Swallow
My steed is commensurate with the sky. I have dreamt
what will happen in the afternoon. The Tatars used
to ride beneath me and beneath the sky: dreaming of nothing
beyond the tents they would erect. Knowing nothing
of the destinies of our goats in the coming blasts of winter.
My steed is commensurate with the evening. The Tatars used
to insert their names in the roofs of villages, like swallows,
and would slumber safely in our cornfields;
they would not dream of what would happen in the afternoon, when
the sky returns, slowly, slowly,
to its own people in the evening
*
We have one dream: that the air flow
as a friend, diffusing the aroma of Arab coffee
over the hills that enclose summer and strangers…
*
I am my own dream. When the earth has grown narrow, I have made it wide
With a swallow’s wing, and grown larger. I am my own dream…
In crowds I am filled with the reflection of myself and my questions
About stars which walk on the two feet of one whom I love
And in my exile there are ways for pilgrims to Jerusalem –
The words plucked out like feathers over the stones,
How many prophets does the city want so as to preserve the name
Of its father and regret: ‘It was not in war that I fell’?
How much sky does it change, in every people,
So that its red shawl might amaze it? O my dream…
Gaze not at us so!
Do not be the last of the martyrs!
*
I fear for my dream from the clarity of the butterfly
And from the mulberry stains over the whinnying of the horse
I fear for it from the father and the son and those crossing
Over the Mediterranean coast in search of the gods
And the gold of those who went before,
I fear for my dream from my hands
And from a star which stands
At my shoulder waiting to sing
*
To us, the people of ancient nights, we have our customs
In climbing to the Moon of rhyme
We accept our dreams as true, and give the lie to our days,
Our days have not all been with us since the Tatars came,
And now here they are, getting ready to move on
Forgetting our days, behind them. Soon we will go down
To our life in the fields. We will make flags
From white bed sheets, if we must have
A flag, let it be blank,
Without fussy symbols… let us be peaceful
Lest we fly our dreams after the strangers’ caravan
*
We have one dream: to find
A dream carrying us
As the star carries the dead!
The Train Went by
The train went swiftly by.
I was waiting
On the platform for a train that had gone,
And the passengers departed to get on with
Their days… And I
Was still waiting
*
Violins lament in the distance,
A cloud carries me
Away, and breaks up
*
Longing for things obscure
Would recede and approach,
There was no forgetting that would draw me away,
No remembering that would draw me close
To a woman
Who, if the moon touched her,
Would cry out: ‘I am the moon’
*
The train went swiftly by,
My time was not with me
On the platform,
The time was different,
What is the time now?
Which day was it, that
Divided yesterday from tomorrow,
When the gypsies departed?
*
Here I was born and not born
My stubborn birth shall be completed then
By this train
And the trees shall walk around me
*
I am here and not here
In this train I shall find out
my soul, filled
By both banks of a river which had died between them
As youth dies
‘Wish that youth were stone…’
*
The train went swiftly by
Past me, I am
Like the station, not knowing
Whether to bid farewell or greet the people:
Welcome to my platforms
Cafes,
Offices,
Flowers,
Telephone,
Newspapers,
Music,
And a rhyme,
By another poet who comes and waits
*
The train went swiftly by
Past me, and I
Am still waiting.
III.
Chaos at the Entrance
of Judgment Day
The Well
I choose a cloudy day to go past the old well.
Perhaps it is full of sky. Perhaps it has gone beyond meaning
and beyond the shepherd’s sayings. I shall drink of its water with cupped hands
and say to the dead around it: Greetings, ye who remain
around the well in the water of the butterfly! I shall pick up the inula
from a stone: Greetings, O little stone! Perhaps we were
the wings of a bird that causes us pain. Greetings,
O moon that hovers around its image; which it will
never meet! And I shall say to the cypress: Beware of what
the dust is telling you. Perhaps we were here two strings of a violin
at the banquet of the guardians of lapis lazuli. Perhaps we were
the arms of a lover…
I had been walking side by side with myself: Be strong,
Comrade, raise up the past like the horns of a goat
with your hands, and sit down near your well. Perhaps the harts
of the watercourse will notice you… The voice cries out –
Your voice is a voice of stone for the broken present…
I have not yet completed my brief visit to oblivion…
I did not take with me all the tools of my heart:
My bell in the pine tree’s breeze
My stairway near the sky
My stars around the roofs
My hoarseness from the bite of old salt…
And I said to memory: Greetings, O spontaneous words of grandmother,
It takes us back to our white days beneath her drowsiness…
And my name rings like an old pound coin of gold at
The gate of the well. I hear the desolation of forefathers
Between the distant meem and waw, like an uncultivated watercourse
And I hide my friendly tiredness. I know that I
Shall come back alive, after a few hours, from the well into which
I have not thrown Joseph or his brothers’ fear
Of echoes. Beware! Your mother put you here,
Near the gate of the well: and went off to a talisman… .
So do with yourself what you want. I did by myself what
I want. I grew up by night in the tale between the sides
Of the triangle: Egypt, Syria, and Babylon. Here,
By myself I grew up without the goddesses of agriculture. (They were
Washing the pebbles in the olive grove. They were wet
With dew)… and I saw that I had fallen
On me from the departure of the caravans near a snake.
I found none to complete but my ghost. Th
e earth
Threw me out of its earth, and my name rings on my steps,
Like a horseshoe; Draw near… so that I may come back from this
Emptiness to you O eternal Gilgamesh in your name!…
Be my brother! And go with me to shout into the old well…
Perhaps it is filled, like a woman, with the sky,
And perhaps it has over meaning and what
Is going to happen as my birth from my first well is awaited!
We shall drink of its water with cupped hands,
We shall say to the dead around it, Greetings,
Ye who live in the water of the butterfly,
O ye dead, greetings!
Like the ‘Nūn; in Surrat ‘al-Rahman’
In the olive grove, east
Of the springs, my grandfather has withdrawn into
His deserted shadow. On his shadow: there has grown no
Legendary grass, no cloud of lilac has flowed inside the shrine
*
The earth is like a robe embroidered
With a needle of sumac in his broken
Dreams… grandfather has awoken
To collect the weeds from his vineyard
Underground, beneath the black street…
*
He taught me the Qur’an under the great basil tree
East of the well,
From Adam we came and from Eve
In the garden of oblivion.
Grandfather! I am the last of the living
In the desert, so let us rise!
*
The sea and the desert around his name,