Translated by Abdul Monem Nasser and Abbas El Sheikh
Edited by Mark Pirie
Whatever I wish, I wish
I release the dawn, to feel a night drowned in blackness
I write the history of Southerners on my mother’s gown
In the rain I discard the death shrouds of pain,
Trailing from her braids
A cemetery of years stretches along a street
Filled with scars of war
A mourning is engulfing our lives
I breathe nothing but destruction
I try in vain to open a window there
I see nothing but beaming defeat
I tower over all and saddle the horizons beneath me
Behind the words fringes peer intensely
And billboards search for Jawad Saleem
It seems time is embroidering an exile for the gowns of palm trees
I undo its buttons and read:
Childhood means queries never ending, ever and ever more
Or queries that grow at the moss of days
Here the evenings settle whenever the sun departs
As if from the womb of an agate
The waiting is but wisdom that takes me to certitude
My lifespan curls along the frozen rain
And under the wandering gazes of virgin clouds
Or
Swaggers frivolously under the spillage of warplanes
And my body, to which splinters are addicted,
Takes refuge in the taverns of exile
I am without pleasures, or glories
My dreams have all but let me down
Isolated in a most far-flung Diaspora
Elegized by my calamity
And guided by my wreckage
I chase the trails of childhood
And stitch together my aspirations
That have been trampled by tanks
I spot the signs of fear, pouring from my pockets
And as the sea is similarly isolated
It begins to share with the exile its estrangement
No one resounds in my voice
I have stolen the memory of my forgetfulness
And although I have tried a thousand times to hide the Euphrates
Instead I have hugged it
And the screams of guns have dripped from my chemise
I have painted a clear sky through which to escape
Only for it to be robbed by rockets
I have painted a brook and have said: Al-Hussainiyah river it is
But the airbases take me from it
I have painted a minaret and a palm tree
Lonely, I have been arrested, but still I held onto my mirror
And the days slapped me, whenever I screamed: Father, oh father!
Because the more I go deeper into his death
He entombs my dreams in dust
I hurt not the timidity of violets
Though their rustle is now intimate with the dew
I put on the glasses of time in the room of my wishes
Silence gulps me down through the folds of farewell
And I remember that in order to not awaken the jasmines,
I must gently brush their petals with my hands
My rags mocked the bombers, yet beyond my doorstep lay a mirage
That window too is a map that clips off the wings of waiting
And rubs out what may be encrypted by imagination in the mind
I had waved to the trees: Protect my shadow from the madness of their steps!
But I was pelted by Void
The seasons shed their garments, so the South could pass by
Jubilantly, dejection opened out the keys to my defeat
How could I pilfer joy from a wreck?
Should I shoot down my headstone?
Pallid is the warmth of my palms
Pallid I am when my wrists denude their melodies
I shoot down my headstone
Now stars rest on the lap of sea creatures and shine for me
By one hand I mend my heart,
By the other I care for the rose not to fall into delirium
I care for the balconies not to crumple into a swamp flushed with heaven
The ocean clutches me, as it falters with my innocence
Doubts climb the edges of time
Piles of syllables scramble on the sides of words
I made you hear my song, yet you only made me hear my burning
I led rain to your door, its fingertips slipping against my forehead
I set loose my lullabies to the gardens,
As I appeared before an inferno of the butterflies
And my destruction was witnessed by the flowers and by the sparrows
Then, upon my pages dreams awakened
I filled up a ditch of light, my shades were denuded
For the whinnies of sin could no more guide women to my inferno
I entombed wind on the corpse of gods
I broke down the whimpers of dusk on the windows
That point to none but me
And do not succumb to the nakedness of a wailing one
Lost in the rumbles of defeat
Now shall I name a rendezvous to entertain my friends -
Without the pomp of companions, or the adornments of angels
Nor with the crimson dew that draggles the scent of exile?
Could it be true that thirty compasses missed me
Except him, the passport officer, so reluctant to leave my memory
So that I might redouble within the shades of words?
The ocean took refuge in my bed, as did the desert
In each dream songs were drowning
And borders became thirsty by the closeness of their spans
My palms bled with ice that faltered whenever mist peeled off my lungs
On the borders of my forgetfulness, the reeds awakened
Only to be sunk by the songs of the sparrows
Shall I now call upon my thirty years so as to protect
The stature of Narcissus from my virility?
More of wonder in the traps of the text!
More astonishment at elegies of drunkards as the dusk falls …
O, entice me to witness the desolation of the date palms
And gulp the residue from the glass
In which our mirrors crowd together!
Edited by Mark Pirie
Whatever I wish, I wish
I release the dawn, to feel a night drowned in blackness
I write the history of Southerners on my mother’s gown
In the rain I discard the death shrouds of pain,
Trailing from her braids
A cemetery of years stretches along a street
Filled with scars of war
A mourning is engulfing our lives
I breathe nothing but destruction
I try in vain to open a window there
I see nothing but beaming defeat
I tower over all and saddle the horizons beneath me
Behind the words fringes peer intensely
And billboards search for Jawad Saleem
It seems time is embroidering an exile for the gowns of palm trees
I undo its buttons and read:
Childhood means queries never ending, ever and ever more
Or queries that grow at the moss of days
Here the evenings settle whenever the sun departs
As if from the womb of an agate
The waiting is but wisdom that takes me to certitude
My lifespan curls along the frozen rain
And under the wandering gazes of virgin clouds
Or
Swaggers frivolously under the spillage of warplanes
And my body, to which splinters are addicted,
Takes refuge in the taverns of exile
I am without pleasures, or glories
My dreams have all but let me down
Isolated in a most far-flung Diaspora
Elegized by my calamity
And guided by my wreckage
I chase the trails of childhood
And stitch together my aspirations
That have been trampled by tanks
I spot the signs of fear, pouring from my pockets
And as the sea is similarly isolated
It begins to share with the exile its estrangement
No one resounds in my voice
I have stolen the memory of my forgetfulness
And although I have tried a thousand times to hide the Euphrates
Instead I have hugged it
And the screams of guns have dripped from my chemise
I have painted a clear sky through which to escape
Only for it to be robbed by rockets
I have painted a brook and have said: Al-Hussainiyah river it is
But the airbases take me from it
I have painted a minaret and a palm tree
Lonely, I have been arrested, but still I held onto my mirror
And the days slapped me, whenever I screamed: Father, oh father!
Because the more I go deeper into his death
He entombs my dreams in dust
I hurt not the timidity of violets
Though their rustle is now intimate with the dew
I put on the glasses of time in the room of my wishes
Silence gulps me down through the folds of farewell
And I remember that in order to not awaken the jasmines,
I must gently brush their petals with my hands
My rags mocked the bombers, yet beyond my doorstep lay a mirage
That window too is a map that clips off the wings of waiting
And rubs out what may be encrypted by imagination in the mind
I had waved to the trees: Protect my shadow from the madness of their steps!
But I was pelted by Void
The seasons shed their garments, so the South could pass by
Jubilantly, dejection opened out the keys to my defeat
How could I pilfer joy from a wreck?
Should I shoot down my headstone?
Pallid is the warmth of my palms
Pallid I am when my wrists denude their melodies
I shoot down my headstone
Now stars rest on the lap of sea creatures and shine for me
By one hand I mend my heart,
By the other I care for the rose not to fall into delirium
I care for the balconies not to crumple into a swamp flushed with heaven
The ocean clutches me, as it falters with my innocence
Doubts climb the edges of time
Piles of syllables scramble on the sides of words
I made you hear my song, yet you only made me hear my burning
I led rain to your door, its fingertips slipping against my forehead
I set loose my lullabies to the gardens,
As I appeared before an inferno of the butterflies
And my destruction was witnessed by the flowers and by the sparrows
Then, upon my pages dreams awakened
I filled up a ditch of light, my shades were denuded
For the whinnies of sin could no more guide women to my inferno
I entombed wind on the corpse of gods
I broke down the whimpers of dusk on the windows
That point to none but me
And do not succumb to the nakedness of a wailing one
Lost in the rumbles of defeat
Now shall I name a rendezvous to entertain my friends -
Without the pomp of companions, or the adornments of angels
Nor with the crimson dew that draggles the scent of exile?
Could it be true that thirty compasses missed me
Except him, the passport officer, so reluctant to leave my memory
So that I might redouble within the shades of words?
The ocean took refuge in my bed, as did the desert
In each dream songs were drowning
And borders became thirsty by the closeness of their spans
My palms bled with ice that faltered whenever mist peeled off my lungs
On the borders of my forgetfulness, the reeds awakened
Only to be sunk by the songs of the sparrows
Shall I now call upon my thirty years so as to protect
The stature of Narcissus from my virility?
More of wonder in the traps of the text!
More astonishment at elegies of drunkards as the dusk falls …
O, entice me to witness the desolation of the date palms
And gulp the residue from the glass
In which our mirrors crowd together!
