Translated by Abbas El Sheikh
Edited by Mark Pirie
What dream that dries my childhood
What dream that cracks my mornings
I am the last in the caravan of solitude
My whinnying is leaning on a desert
Flooded with mourning
And jogging under rains and the splinters of bombs
How can I let my forgetfulness
Disperse its memories in the direction of pain
And not cry: Oh homeland, bring me back
My innocence
So it can be stripped of everything
But the Black garment!
I am touching my blood
Lonely in the parade’s square
My echo is shooting the wind
And destroying my papers
Now there are no shadows for my solitude to be upright
How can I wet my forgetfulness
With the dawn of amulets
And the Arabian jasmine’s stream of pain?
The beginning was two firebrands
Hastening the horizon
And whinnying at the door
Without answers
The beginning was to trim my sadness
Sagging under the weight of my dream
And now I am counting the fires of my life
My fires protrude in my memory
I have the language of shooting stars
And the lust of Archipelagos which the
Poems are unable to endure
There is no guide for my compass
Except sadness
And the dawn is packaged in testimony
To my past
I lament you, O defiance!, because your wings
Are two nooses for daylight
While the sea lets the sunset escape to identityless shore;
The dusk is the geography of our blood -
Myself and Baghdad …
We sit on a shore we know
Sipping our destruction
O Baghdad …
Night is drying your darkness
By my light!
Peace resides on the farewell handkerchiefs which
Are dried by the rain of waiting
Peace dwells in the gowns of tears which are
Our history without a doubt
I alone fill the rivers with songs
And memories
And strip the waves from their hallucinations
I am proud of my destruction
And with my destruction I scrape the rust
From the clouds
Like I scrape from my childhood the
Warplanes and trenches
I have the times of myrtle and Narcissus,
And while they are drowning
I write to myself:
My mistakes
Are a coffin
Chasing me, uttering a language
That was lost by its own alphabet
Until it became homeless,
Like nations decayed from divulgence
In the cage of wishes
My mistakes:
I am my mistakes,
The mistakes of my father:
A mistake that is repeated,
My mother is a mistake awaiting a mistake
Due to a mistake,
I am a mistake counting my steps and
Make a mistake
How can I let my forgetfulness splinter?
The datepalms are brimming and moaning
I am the Sumerian
Who is heavily armed
With dreams and questions
I tentatively
Shake nostalgia from my fingers
I freeze inside my life
I shake trying in vain to remove fear from
My pillow
I caress the sweetness of the forests
And cover the shyness of the sea
Before the flighty waves
I lead the candles to light
And mend their patience
Not caring for eternity
Without caring for their fading too
I snatch the horizons and leave
I am the paradise of myself and its doomsday
I point to basil slowly
And gradually the fields flow on my bed
The shores sprinkle their wailing near me
While tears flow through windows of waiting
My longing sneaks away discreetly
I feel it
I plough in daytime
And it ploughs me at night
My yearning drags the river to its desert
And its thirst to sky
And it wails before the oneness of
Its innocence
My longing is praying in the hearth of its quarrels
Carrying the firebrand in its agony
Now, which alley will open its shirt for a stranger?
I suspend my defeats on the walls
And make nostalgia my pillow
I am but the last in the caravan of solitude
And because there are no glories to gild my life
My dreams have left me and gone
I leave my sighs on the windows
And at the doors I leave my defeats
Edited by Mark Pirie
What dream that dries my childhood
What dream that cracks my mornings
I am the last in the caravan of solitude
My whinnying is leaning on a desert
Flooded with mourning
And jogging under rains and the splinters of bombs
How can I let my forgetfulness
Disperse its memories in the direction of pain
And not cry: Oh homeland, bring me back
My innocence
So it can be stripped of everything
But the Black garment!
I am touching my blood
Lonely in the parade’s square
My echo is shooting the wind
And destroying my papers
Now there are no shadows for my solitude to be upright
How can I wet my forgetfulness
With the dawn of amulets
And the Arabian jasmine’s stream of pain?
The beginning was two firebrands
Hastening the horizon
And whinnying at the door
Without answers
The beginning was to trim my sadness
Sagging under the weight of my dream
And now I am counting the fires of my life
My fires protrude in my memory
I have the language of shooting stars
And the lust of Archipelagos which the
Poems are unable to endure
There is no guide for my compass
Except sadness
And the dawn is packaged in testimony
To my past
I lament you, O defiance!, because your wings
Are two nooses for daylight
While the sea lets the sunset escape to identityless shore;
The dusk is the geography of our blood -
Myself and Baghdad …
We sit on a shore we know
Sipping our destruction
O Baghdad …
Night is drying your darkness
By my light!
Peace resides on the farewell handkerchiefs which
Are dried by the rain of waiting
Peace dwells in the gowns of tears which are
Our history without a doubt
I alone fill the rivers with songs
And memories
And strip the waves from their hallucinations
I am proud of my destruction
And with my destruction I scrape the rust
From the clouds
Like I scrape from my childhood the
Warplanes and trenches
I have the times of myrtle and Narcissus,
And while they are drowning
I write to myself:
My mistakes
Are a coffin
Chasing me, uttering a language
That was lost by its own alphabet
Until it became homeless,
Like nations decayed from divulgence
In the cage of wishes
My mistakes:
I am my mistakes,
The mistakes of my father:
A mistake that is repeated,
My mother is a mistake awaiting a mistake
Due to a mistake,
I am a mistake counting my steps and
Make a mistake
How can I let my forgetfulness splinter?
The datepalms are brimming and moaning
I am the Sumerian
Who is heavily armed
With dreams and questions
I tentatively
Shake nostalgia from my fingers
I freeze inside my life
I shake trying in vain to remove fear from
My pillow
I caress the sweetness of the forests
And cover the shyness of the sea
Before the flighty waves
I lead the candles to light
And mend their patience
Not caring for eternity
Without caring for their fading too
I snatch the horizons and leave
I am the paradise of myself and its doomsday
I point to basil slowly
And gradually the fields flow on my bed
The shores sprinkle their wailing near me
While tears flow through windows of waiting
My longing sneaks away discreetly
I feel it
I plough in daytime
And it ploughs me at night
My yearning drags the river to its desert
And its thirst to sky
And it wails before the oneness of
Its innocence
My longing is praying in the hearth of its quarrels
Carrying the firebrand in its agony
Now, which alley will open its shirt for a stranger?
I suspend my defeats on the walls
And make nostalgia my pillow
I am but the last in the caravan of solitude
And because there are no glories to gild my life
My dreams have left me and gone
I leave my sighs on the windows
And at the doors I leave my defeats
