Translated by Muhiddein Assaf
Edited by Mark Pirie
What a madness that curtails the poem: I mean you!
My hands do everything in free will; my eyes are expatiating.
The defeats that dwell on my lips are glories of war for others.
I do not approach but my heart dries,
Theft crashes my memory and its
Prison cells change me into a ragged shirt.
Exile flows down my shoulders, and on the windows
I see questions from those who’ve disappeared.
My suns break in the basket of pain,
My neigh dissipates before it can be heard.
I am Basim Furat … O God!… do you know me?
Police stations are tattooed on my skin, and my mother
Does not see the splinters when she combs my youth.
She dissolves wax and myrtle over my dawning
With her aba that looks like my days,
And sweeps away the warplanes, drawing me as she pleases.
Is this because I carry my nation in my shirt pocket
And beneath my tongue two rivers are rumbling?
I run after my death, and my corpse follows me.
My nation is a long autumn: a flood of nausea.
Light hides under your hat, and on your chest questions blossom.
For a rose I sing, besieged by sadness.
And you are unaware of what it means
To leave our kisses on marble
Letting air slip between our knees.
You take a chance - you take it all.
My cold hand spans the returning horizon,
The sea exasperates me: another star falls under the dream.
1 March 1967: I expropriate my father’s caliphate.
I strike at his strength,
And ruins dangle from his mouth.
1980: I follow my corpse - I am decrepit,
My route riddled with yearning.
They leave me between two orphaned mountains and go.
I glance at their steps - yawning - but they do not notice
That my shirt is wet with dews and rubs the sleep from its eyes.
Their screams are preceding them.
Why is my heart a coat? Between your lips
Wisdom awakens and delights the moon.
Why can the larks not imagine the secret of our departure?
Why should the fields narrow
And our lives start to cough
And our mirrors spit on their mirrors?
Do not bend.
My hallucination is a window wider than a horizon,
Higher than the clouds of our pleasures
And the banners of the defeated.
Its fragrance creeps over your legs
And slips between your fingers ... as dynasties ... dynasties.
The letters are in the house
But the verse takes its shape.
Who granted the city this mouth
To swallow poems and fields?
And I find not a door for freedom.
Edited by Mark Pirie
What a madness that curtails the poem: I mean you!
My hands do everything in free will; my eyes are expatiating.
The defeats that dwell on my lips are glories of war for others.
I do not approach but my heart dries,
Theft crashes my memory and its
Prison cells change me into a ragged shirt.
Exile flows down my shoulders, and on the windows
I see questions from those who’ve disappeared.
My suns break in the basket of pain,
My neigh dissipates before it can be heard.
I am Basim Furat … O God!… do you know me?
Police stations are tattooed on my skin, and my mother
Does not see the splinters when she combs my youth.
She dissolves wax and myrtle over my dawning
With her aba that looks like my days,
And sweeps away the warplanes, drawing me as she pleases.
Is this because I carry my nation in my shirt pocket
And beneath my tongue two rivers are rumbling?
I run after my death, and my corpse follows me.
My nation is a long autumn: a flood of nausea.
Light hides under your hat, and on your chest questions blossom.
For a rose I sing, besieged by sadness.
And you are unaware of what it means
To leave our kisses on marble
Letting air slip between our knees.
You take a chance - you take it all.
My cold hand spans the returning horizon,
The sea exasperates me: another star falls under the dream.
1 March 1967: I expropriate my father’s caliphate.
I strike at his strength,
And ruins dangle from his mouth.
1980: I follow my corpse - I am decrepit,
My route riddled with yearning.
They leave me between two orphaned mountains and go.
I glance at their steps - yawning - but they do not notice
That my shirt is wet with dews and rubs the sleep from its eyes.
Their screams are preceding them.
Why is my heart a coat? Between your lips
Wisdom awakens and delights the moon.
Why can the larks not imagine the secret of our departure?
Why should the fields narrow
And our lives start to cough
And our mirrors spit on their mirrors?
Do not bend.
My hallucination is a window wider than a horizon,
Higher than the clouds of our pleasures
And the banners of the defeated.
Its fragrance creeps over your legs
And slips between your fingers ... as dynasties ... dynasties.
The letters are in the house
But the verse takes its shape.
Who granted the city this mouth
To swallow poems and fields?
And I find not a door for freedom.