Mahmoud Darwish - Mural

Mural

This is your name
a woman said
and disappeared in the spiraling corridor

I could see the sky over there within my grasp.
A dove's white wing carried me toward
another childhood. I wasn't dreaming
that I was dreaming. Everything was realistic. I knew
I was tossing myself to the side
before I flew. I would become what I want
in the final orbit. Everything was white:
the sea hanging above the roof of a white
cloud was nothingness in the white
sky of the absolute. I was
and I wasn't. I was alone in the corners of this
eternal whiteness. I came before my time and not
one angel appeared to ask me:
"What did you do, there, in life?"
And I didn't hear the chants of the virtuous
or the sinners' moans, I was alone in whiteness,
alone . . .

Nothing hurts me at Resurrection's door.
Not time or emotion. I don't feel
the lightness of things or the heaviness
of obsession. I found no one to ask:
Where is my "where" now? Where is the city
of the dead, and where am I? There is no void
in non-place, in non-time,
or in non-being

It's as if I had died before now . . .
I know this vision and know that I
am heading to an unknown. Maybe
I'm still alive in some place, where
I still know what I want . . .

One day I will become what I want

One day I will become an idea. No sword will carry it
to the wasteland and no book . . .
like a rain on a mountain that has cracked
from a single sprout
so neither force
nor fugitive justice can win

One day I will become what I want

One day I will become a bird and unsheathe my existence
out of my void. When the two wings burn
I'll near the truth and reincarnate
from ash. I am the dialogue of dreamers. I turned
away from my body and my self to complete
my first journey toward meaning, but meaning
burned me and disappeared. I am absence.
The heavenly and the expelled

One day I will become what I want

One day I will become a poet,
water will be my vision's subject, and my language
a metaphor for metaphor. I'd neither say nor point
to a place. Place is my sin and pretext.
I come from there. My here leaps
from my steps to my imagination . . .
I am who I was and who I will be,
the endless vast space makes me
and destroys me

One day I will become what I want

One day I will become a vineyard,
so let summer press me from now,
let those passing by the sugary chandeliers
of the place drink my wine.
I am the message and the messenger.
The mail and the tiny address

One day I will become what I want

This is your name
a nurse said
and disappeared in her corridor's whiteness:
This is your name, remember it well!
And don't disagree with it over a letter
or concern yourself with tribal banners,
be a friend to your horizontal name,
try it out on the dead and the living, teach it
accurate pronunciation in the company of strangers,
and write it on one of the cave's rocks
and say: My name, you will grow when I grow,
you will carry me when I carry you,
a stranger is another stranger's brother.
We will seize the feminine with a vowel promised to the flutes.
My name, where are we now?
Answer me. What is now, what is tomorrow?
What is time or place,
the old or the new?

One day we will become what we want

The journey did not begin, nor the road end.
The sages have not attained their estrangement
just as the strangers have not attained their wisdom.
And of flowers we only know the anemones.
So let's go to the highest mural:
My poem's land is green, high,
the speech of G-d at dawn,
and I am the distant,
the far

In each wind a woman toys with her poet:
Take the direction you gave me,
the one that broke,
and bring back my femininity:
nothing remains for me outside pondering
the lake's wrinkles. Take my tomorrow from me
and bring back my yesterday then leave us alone.
Nothing, after you, will depart
or return

And the poet says: Take my poem if you want,
there's nothing in it for me besides you,
take your "I." I will complete exile
with the messages your hands have left for the doves.
Which one of us is "I" that I may become its other?
A star will fall between speech and writing,
and memory will spread its thoughts: we were born
in the age of the sword and the mizmar
between figs and cactus. Death was slower then.
Clearer. The truce of pedestrians by the river's end.
But now, the electronic button works unaided. No
killer listens to the killed, and no martyr
recites his will

Which wind brought you, woman?
Say your wound's name and I'll know the roads
on which we'll get lost twice.
Every pulse in you aches in me and returns me
to a mythic time. My blood hurts me.
Salt hurts me, and my jugular vein . . .

In the fractured urn the women of the Syrian coast
wailed from the distance
and burned with the August sun. I saw them
on the road to the springs before my birth. I heard
the water in the ceramic jars cry over them:
Go back to the cloud and mirth will return

Echo said:
Only the past of the powerful returns
on the obelisks of vastness . . . (their relics are golden,
golden). While the letters the weak write to tomorrow
return and ask: Give us the bread of sustenance, give us
a stronger present. We are not immortal (we have only
impersonation and incarnation)

Echo said:
I am tired of my intractable hope. I am tired
of the ruse of aesthetic: What after
Babylon? Whenever the road is clearer
and the unknown reveals
an ultimate goal, prose disseminates in prayer
and anthem breaks

Green, my poem's land is green and high . . .
It looks out on me from the flatland of my abyss:
You're strange in your meaning. It's enough
that you be there, alone, to become a tribe . . .
I sang to weigh the spilled vastness
in the ache of a dove
and not to explain what G-d says to man.
I am not a prophet to claim a revelation
and declare my abyss an ascent

I am the stranger, with all of what I was given
of my language. If I submit my emotion to the Dhad,
my emotion submits me to the Ya'.
And the words, when far, have a land that neighbors
a higher planet. And the words, when near,
have an exile. The book is not enough for me to say:
I found myself as present as a filled absence.
Whenever I searched for myself I found
the others. Whenever I searched for the others I found
only my stranger self in them,
so am I the one, the multitude?

I am the stranger. Tired from the Milky Way
to the beloved. Tired from my adjectives.
Form has become narrow. Speech wide. I overflow
my vocabulary's need, I look
at myself in mirrors: Am I he?
Do I perform my role well in the final act?
Did I read this script before the show
or was it imposed on me? Am I he
who performs the role, or did the victim change
his affidavit to live the postmodern moment,
since the author strayed from the script
and the actors and spectators have gone?

I sat behind the door watching:
Am I he?
This is my language. And this voice is the prick
in my blood but the author is another . . .
I am not from me, if I come and don't arrive.
I am not from me, if I say and don't speak.
I am the one to whom the mysterious letters say:
Write, and you'll be.
Read, and you'll find.
And if you want to speak then act, and unite
your opposites in meaning . . .
your translucent interior is the poem

There are sailors around me but no port.
Dust has emptied me of gesture and phrase.
I found no time to know where I should settle
my brief moment between two points. I haven't
yet asked my question about the blurred simile
between two doors: entry or exit . . .
And I found no death to snipe at life,
no voice that shouts: Fast time!
you snatched me from what
the mysterious letters of the alphabet say to me:
The realistic is the certain imaginary

Time that has not waited . . .
has not waited for anyone who was late for his birth,
let the past be new, it's your only memory
among us, when we were your friends
and not your vessels' victims. Leave the past
as it is, not leading or led

I saw what the dead remember and forget.
They don't grow older, they don't tell the time
by their wristwatches. They don't feel
our death or their life, and nothing
of what I was or will be. All pronouns
dissolve. He is in "I" and in "you."
Not part and not whole. No living
tells the dead: become me
. . . and all the elements and emotions dissolve. I don't
see my body over there, I don't feel
the ardor of death or my first life.
As if I am not of me. Who am I? Am I
the missing or the newborn?

Time is zero. I didn't think of birth
when death flew me to nebulae,
where I was neither alive nor dead,
where there's no being or void

My nurse would say: You are much better today!
Then she'd inject me with sedatives: Be calm
and worthy of what you're about
to dream . . .

I saw my French doctor
open my cell
and beat me with a stick,
with the help of two policemen from the suburbs

I saw my father coming back
from Hajj, unconscious,
with heatstroke from Hejaz,
saying to a file of angels around him:
Extinguish me . . .

I saw Moroccan youth
playing soccer
and stoning me: Go back with your phrase
and leave our mother here for us,
dear Father, you have lost your way to the grave

I saw Rene Char
sitting with Heidegger
two meters from me,
they were drinking wine
not looking for poetry . . .
the conversation was a beam of light
and a passing tomorrow was waiting

I saw my three friends weeping
while weaving
with gold threads
a coffin for me

I saw al-Ma'arri kick his critics out
of his poem: I am not blind
to see what you see,
vision is a light that leads
to void . . . or madness

I saw a country embrace me
with morning hands: Be
worthy of the scent of bread. Be
fit for summer flowers,
your mother's brick oven
is still blazing, her greeting
is still warm like the loaf she bakes . . .

Green, my poem's land is green. One river is enough for me to whisper to the butterfly: O sister. One river is enough to seduce the ancient myths to remain on the wings of an eagle. An eagle that changes banners and distant peaks, where armies
have founded the kingdoms of forgetfulness for me. There is no nation smaller
than its poem. But weapons widen the word for the dead and the living in it, and
the letters brighten the sword that hangs in dawn's belt, and the song either diminishes or expands the desert

There isn't enough life to pull my end toward my beginning. The shepherds took
my story and infiltrated the grass that grows over the beauty of ruins. They overcame forgetfulness with trumpets and radiant rhymed prose, then bequeathed me the hoarseness of memory on farewell's stone and didn't return . . .

Our days are pastoral, pastoral, between city and tribe. I did not find a private night
for your howdah that is laureled with mirage. Yet you said to me:

What need do I have for my name without you? Call to me. I created
you when you named me, and you killed me when you owned the
name . . . how did you kill me while I am the stranger of all this night?
Bring me inside the forest of your desire, embrace me, press me, and
spill this pure processional honey over the honeycomb. Scatter me
with what your hands own of the wind then gather me. Because the
night surrenders its soul to you, stranger, and each star that sees
me knows my family will kill me with the water of lapis lazuli. So as I shatter my urn with my hands - bring me in, and I would have my happy present . . .

. . . or did you say something to me that would change my path?
- No. My life was outside me. I am one who talks to himself:
My last mu'allaqah fell off my palm trees.
I am the traveler within me, besieged
by dualities, but life
is worthy of its mystery
and of the house sparrow . . .
I wasn't born to know that I would die, I was born to love
the content of G-d's shadow.
Beauty takes me to the beautiful,
and I love your love as it is, liberated
from itself and its adjectives.
I am my alternate . . .

I am one who talks to himself:
from the smallest things the largest things are born,
and cadence doesn't come from the words
but from the aloneness of two bodies
in a long night . . .

I am one who talks to himself
and tames the memory . . . are you me?
And our third flutters between us:
"Don't the two of you forget me, you hear?" Death!
take us, but in our style: we might learn illumination . . .
There is no moon or sun upon me,
I left my shadow stuck in a boxthorn's twigs
before the place became lighter in me
and my fugitive soul took me in flight

I am one who talks to himself:
Woman, what did yearning do to us?
The wind polishes us and carries us like the scent of autumn.
You have grown older on my cane,
you can now get on "the Damascus road"
confident of your vision . . A guardian angel
and two doves flutter over the remainder of our lives,
and the earth is a festival . . .

The earth is the festival of losers (and we belong to them). We come from the
traces of the epic anthem of the place, and our tents in the wind are an elderly falcon's feather. We were kind here, austere without Christ's instructions. We were stronger than the herbs only at the end of summer:

You are my truth, and I am your question.
We inherited only our names.
You are my garden, and I am your shadows
at the crossroads of the epic anthem . . .

We didn't participate in the chores of G-ddesses who used to begin their song with
magic and deceit. They used to carry the place on the stag's horns from the time
of place to another time . . . we would have been ordinary had our sky's stars been
a little higher than the stones of our wells, had the prophets been less insistent,
and the soldiers not heard our eulogies . . .

Green, my poem's land is green,
the lyricists carry it from one time to another faithful to its fertility.
And of it, I have
the narcissus contemplating the water of its image.
And of it, I have
the clarity of shadows in synonyms, and the precision of meaning.
And the similarity in the speech of prophets on the surface of night.
And of it, I have the donkey of wisdom forgotten on top of the hill
mocking the poem's reality and myth . . .
And I have the congestion of symbol with its opposites:
embodiment doesn't bring it back from memory
and abstraction doesn't raise it to the grand illumination.
And I have the other "I"
writing its diaries in the notebooks of lyricists:
"If this dream is not enough
then I have a heroic wakeful night at the gates of exile . . . "
And of it, I have echo as it scrapes the sea salt
of my language off the walls
when I'm betrayed by an archenemy of a heart . . .

Higher than the marshes in Aghwar was my wisdom
when I told the devil: No. Don't test me. Don't place me
in the dualities and leave me
as I am, at ease with the Old Testament's narrative,
ascending toward heaven: There is my kingdom. So take
History, son of my father, take it . . . and make
of instinct what you will

And I have serenity. A small grain of wheat
is enough (for me and my enemy brother).
My hour hasn't arrived yet. Nor has
harvest. I must shadow absence
and believe my heart first, follow it
to Cana in Galilee. My hour hasn't arrived yet.
Perhaps there's something in me that banishes me, perhaps
I am other than me. The fig orchards haven't ripened
around the girls' dresses. The phoenix
feather hasn't yet birthed me. There's no one there
waiting for me. I came before, I came
after, but found no one who believes what I see.
I am the one who saw. I am
the distant and the far

Self, who are you? On the road
we are two, and in Resurrection one.
Take me to the light of vanishing to see
what becomes of me in my other image.
Who will I be after you? Is my body
ahead of you or behind you? Who am I?

Form me as I formed you, paint me
with almond oil, crown me with cedar.
Carry me from the wadi to a white
eternity. Teach me life in your style, test me
as an atom in the upper world.
Help me with the boredom of immortality,
and be merciful
when you wound me, when from my arteries
the roses bloom . . .

Our hour hasn't arrived. There are no messengers
measuring time with the last fistful of grass:
whether time has turned around.
And no angels are visiting the place, for the poets
to leave their past on the beautiful dusk
and open their tomorrow with their hands.
So sing, my favorite G-ddess, Anat, sing again
my first poem about creation . . .
The narrators might find the willow's birth
certificate under an autumn stone. The herders might find
the well in the depths of song. And life might come suddenly,
to those disinclined to meaning, from the wing of a butterfly
caught in a rhyme, so sing, my noble G-ddess. Say:
I am the prey and the arrow,
I am the words, the one who commemorates,
I am the muezzin and the martyr . . .

I didn't bid the ruins farewell. I was
what I was only once. I was only once:
enough for me to know how time breaks
like a bedouin's tent in the northerly wind.
And how place is cleaved and wears the past,
the scattering of the abandoned
temple. What's around me
resembles me a lot but I resemble nothing
here. As if the earth is too narrow
for ailing lyricists, the devil's grandchildren
who are helpless mad: whenever they see
a beautiful dream they coach the parrot some love
poems before the borders open

And I want to live . . .
I have work to do aboard the ship. Not
to rescue a bird from our hunger or from
seasickness, but to watch the flood
from up close . . . Then what? What
do the survivors do with the ancient earth?
Do they repeat the story? What's the beginning
or the end? No dead
ever came back to tell us the truth . . .

Death! wait for me outside the earth,
in your country, until I finish
some passing talk with what remains of my life
near your tent. Wait for me until I finish
reading Tarafah. The existentialists
tempt me to exhaust every moment
with freedom, justice, and the wine of the G-ds . . .

Death! wait for me, until I finish
the funeral arrangements in this fragile spring,
when I was born, when I would prevent the sermonizers
from repeating what they said about the sad country
and the resistance of olives and figs in the face
of time and its army. I will tell them: Pour me
in the Nun, where my soul gulps
Surat al-Rahman in the Quran. And walk
silently with me in my forefathers' footsteps,
and on the flute's stride in my eternity.
Don't place violets on my grave: violets are
for the depressed, to remind the dead of love's
premature death. Place seven green ears
of wheat on the coffin instead, and some
anemones, if either can be found. Otherwise, leave the roses
of the church to the church and the weddings.
Death, wait, until I pack my suitcase:
my toothbrush, my soap,
my electric razor, cologne, and clothes.
Is the climate temperate there?
Do conditions change in the eternal whiteness
or do they remain the same in autumn
as in winter? Is one book enough
to entertain me in timelessness, or will I need
a library? And what's the spoken language there:
colloquial for all, or classical Arabic?

. . . Death, wait, wait
until I recover my mind's clarity in spring,
and my health, so you'll be a noble hunter
who doesn't hunt the doe near the water spring. Let the relation
between us be friendly and open: you have of my life
what's yours when I fill it up . . .
and of you I have contemplating the stars and the planets:
no one's ever completely died. Those are souls
that change their residence and form.
Death, my shadow that leads me,
the third of two, the color
of hesitation in emerald and chrysolite,
peacock blood, sniper of the wolf's
heart, imagination's illness - have a seat
on the chair and set your hunting tools
aside under my window. Hang your heavy keys
on the house door and don't stare
at my arteries to detect the final
weakness. You are stronger than
the medical establishment. Stronger than
the respiratory system and powerful honey,
and you don't need my disease to kill me.

Rise above insects. Be yourself,
transparent, a clear mail to the unknown.
Be, like love, a storm on trees, and don't
sit on doorsteps like a beggar or a tax
collector. Don't be a traffic policeman in the streets. Be strong,
with radiant steel, and take off your fox's mask. Be
knightly, beautiful, with thorough blows. And say
what you want. Say: "From meaning to meaning I come.
Life is a flow I intensify and define
with my sultanate and scale" . . .

Death, wait, have a seat.
Have a glass of wine and don't
negotiate with me. The likes of you don't negotiate
with anyone, and the likes of me don't object
to the servant of the unknown. Take a rest . . . perhaps
the star wars have tired you today? Who am I
in their midst that you visit me? Do you have time to test
my poem? No. This is not your concern.
You are responsible for the clay
in the human, not for what he says or does.
Death, all the arts have defeated you, all of them,
all the songs in Mesopotamia have defeated you,
the Egyptians' obelisk, the Pharaohs' tombs,
the carvings on temple rock, all have defeated you,
and immortality has escaped your traps . . .
So do with us, and with yourself, what you will

And I want to live, I want to live . . .
I have work to do in the geography of the volcano.
From Lot's days to Hiroshima
the wasteland has been the same. As if I live here
forever with a lust for what I don't know.
Maybe "now" is farther than I think. Maybe
yesterday's closer. And tomorrow is past.
But I pull "now" by the hand so History
(not the circular time) can pass near me
like the chaos of mountain goats. Will I
survive the speed of electronic time tomorrow,
or will I survive the slowness of my caravan
across the desert? I have work to do for my end,
as if I would not be alive tomorrow. And I have work to do
for an eternally present day. That's why I listen, patiently,
to the sound of ants in my heart:
Aid me against my skin. I listen to the imprisoned
stone's scream: Free my body. I see
in the violin the migration of longing from a land
of dust to a heavenly land. I arrest in the feminine hand
my domestic eternity: I was created,
I loved, got bored, then I wakened
in grass over my grave that tells of me
from time to time. What good is the handsome
spring if it doesn't serenade the dead and complete
life's joy and the lush of forgetfulness after?
This is a method in solving the riddle of poetry,
my sentimental poetry at least, and sleep
is but our method of speech.

Death, have a seat and enmesh yourself
with the crystal of my days, as if you were one
of my constant friends, exiled among
exiled creatures . . . Yet you are the only exile. Don't live
your life. Your life is only my death. You neither
live nor die, and you snatch the children
from the thirst of milk to milk. Though you were
never a child whose bed the swallows rocked,
and no cherubs ever dallied with you, not even
the horns of a distracted stag. But all this happened
to us, we, the guests of the butterfly.
You are the only exile, poor you! No woman
embraces you between her breasts, or shares with you
a longing that abbreviates the night with lewd utterance
as a synonym of the earth's mingling
with heaven within us. And you bore no child
to entreat you and say: Father,
I love you. You are the only exile, O king
of kings, your scepter has no eulogies. No
eagles on your horse. No pearls stud your crown.
You are naked of the banners
and the holy trumpet.
How do you walk like this without guards or a singing choir,
like a coward thief, while you are who you are,
the aggrandized, custodian of the dead, powerful
commander of the obdurate Assyrian army?
So do with us, and with yourself, what you will

And I want, I want to live and forget you . . .
forget our long relationship
so I can read the letters
the distant heavens inscribe. Whenever
I prepared myself for your coming,
you grew more distant. Whenever I said: Go away!
I want to complete the cycle of two bodies in one
that overflows itself, you appeared in the midst of me
and mocked me: "Don't forget our appointment . . . "
-And when is it?
-At the height of forgetfulness, when you believe in life
and piously worship the wood of temples and the drawings
in the cave, when man says: "My relics are who I am
and I am my self's son . . ." so where shall we meet?
-Would you permit me to choose a cafe by the sea gate?
- No . . . no, son of Adam, son of sin, don't come
near G-d's borders, you were not born to ask, but to act . . .
-Death, be a kind friend. Be an intellectual meaning: I may realize
the essence of your concealed wisdom. You might have been hasty
in teaching Abel archery. You might have hesitated
before schooling Job in prolonged patience. And you might
have saddled a horse for me to kill me on it. As if my language,
when I remember forgetfulness, can rescue
my present. As if I were forever present. Forever
a bird. As if my language, since I've known you,
has become addicted to its fragility on your white vehicles,
higher than the clouds of sleep,
when feeling is liberated from the burden
of all the elements. Because you and I on G-d's road
are two Sufis who are governed by vision
but don't see.

Death, go home alone, safe and sound,
I am free here in no here and no there. Go back
alone to your exile. Go back to your hunting tools
and wait for me by the sea gate. Prepare
some red wine for me, to celebrate my return
to the diseased clinic of the earth. Don't be vulgar
with a crude heart! I won't come to mock you, or walk
on the lake's water in the soul's north. But I, now
that you have tempted me, have neglected the poem's end:
I did not parade my mother to my father
on my horse. I left the door open
for the Andalus of lyricists, and chose to stand
on the almond and pomegranate fence, shaking
the spiderwebs off my grandfather's aba
while a foreign army was marching
the same old roads, measuring time
with the same old war machine . . .

Death, is this History:
your brother or your enemy climbing
between two chasms? A dove might build its nest
and lay its eggs in metal helmets. And the woodworm might
grow on the wheels of a shattered vessel.
What does History, brother or enemy, do
with nature, when the earth weds the heaven
and the holy rain is shed?
Wait for me, Death, by the sea
gate in the romantics' cafe. Your arrows
have missed once, yet I returned only to store my interior
in my exterior. And to spread the wheat that has filled my soul
over the thrush that has alit on my hand and shoulder.
I bid farewell to the land that absorbs me like salt then scatters me
like grass for the horse and gazelle. Wait
while I finish my brief visit to time and place,
and don't believe me if I return or not.
And to life, I say: Thank you!
I was neither dead nor alive,
and you, Death, were alone and lonely . . .

My nurse says: You used to hallucinate
often and scream: Heart,
O heart, take me
to the bathroom . . .

What good is the soul if my body
is ill and unable to perform
its primary function?
Heart, O heart, trace my steps back to me,
I want to walk to the bathroom
on my own.
I forgot my arms, legs, knees,
and the apple of gravity.
I forgot my heart's function
and Eve's garden at the beginning of eternity.
I forgot my little organ's function,
forgot how to breathe with my lungs.
I forgot speech,
I fear for my language:
Leave everything as it is, heart,
and bring life back to my language . . .

My nurse says: You used to hallucinate
often and scream at me:
I don't want to return to anyone,
I don't want to return to any country
after this long absence . . .
I want only to return
to my language in the distances of cooing

My nurse says:
You would hallucinate for a long while and ask me:
Is death what you are doing to me now
or is it the death of language?

Green, my poem's land is green and high . . .
Patiently, I write it down, patiently, to the meter
of seagulls in the book of water. I write it
and bequeath it to those who ask: To whom do we sing
when saltiness spreads in dew? . . . Green, I write it to the scattering
of wheat ears in the book of the field. A pale fullness
in it and in me has bent it into a bow. And whenever
I befriended a grain spike
or became its brother, I learned from vanishing, and in spite
of it, how to survive: "I am the grain
of wheat that has died to become green again.
And in my death there is a kind of life . . . "

And I seem to be and not be.
No one died over there on my behalf.
What, then, do the dead memorize of words
other than those of gratitude: "G-d is merciful to us" . . .
And I entertain myself with remembering what I forgot
of eloquence: "I did not bear a boy to bear his father's death" . . .
I preferred the free marriage between words . . .
the feminine will find the suitable masculine
in poetry's leaning toward prose . . .
then my organs and limbs will grow on a sycamore,
my heart will pour its earthly water
in one of the planets . . . Who am I after I die?
Who am I before I die? Some marginal specter
replied: "Osiris was
like you and me, and Mary's son was
like you and me. Still, at the right moment, the wound
hurts the ill void, and lifts up the temporary
death like an idea . . . "
What is the source of the poetic, the sentimental?
Is it the heart's intelligence or the instinct of sensing
the unknown? Or is it a red rose
in the desert? The personal is not personal.
The universal not universal . . .

And I seem to be and not be . . .
Whenever I listen to the heart I become filled
with what the unknown says, and the trees
lift me high. From dream to dream
I fly without a final goal.
For thousands of romantic years I used to be born
in a darkness of white linen,
I couldn't tell exactly who I was
from my dream. I am my dream.

And I seem to be and not be . . .
my language bid its pastoral tone farewell
only during the migration to the north. Our dogs
were calm. Our goats were veiled with fog
on the hills. And a stray arrow split the face
of certainty. I tired of what my language
on the backs of horses says or doesn't say
about the days of Imru' el-Qyss,
who was scattered between Caesar and rhyme . . .

Whenever I turn my face toward my G-ds,
over there, in the purple lands, a moon
Anat encircles, illuminates me. Anat
is the lady of metonymy in story. She didn't cry for anyone,
she cried for her beauty:
Is all this wondrous magic mine alone?
Is there no poet who shares with me
my bed's vacant glory
or picks from my feminine fence
what overflows of my roses?
Is there no poet who seduces
the night's milk in my breasts?
I am the first
and the other,
my limit has exceeded my boundaries.
And after me the gazelles run in the words,
there is no one before or after me . . .

I will dream . . . not to mend the vehicles of the wind
or a malfunction in the soul.
The myth has already taken its place - the ruse
in the context of the realistic. And neither can the poem
alter a past that passes or doesn't pass,
nor can it halt the earthquake.
But I will dream.
Perhaps some country is wide enough for me just as I am:
one of the people of this sea
who has ceased asking the difficult question: "Who am I
right here? Am I my mother's son?"
Doubts don't fence me in, and shepherds and kings
don't besiege me, and my present, like my tomorrow, is with me.
My small notebook is with me: whenever a bird rubs wings
with a cloud, I write it down: dream has released
my wings. I too fly. Every living thing
flies. And I am me,
nothing else

And I am one of the people of these plains . . .
in the barley festival I visit my beautiful ruins,
a tattoo in identity
the wind neither kills nor immortalizes . . .
And in the feast of vineyards I gulp
a glass of wine from street vendors . . . my soul
is light, and my body is heavy with memory and place.
In spring, I become a fleeting thought for a tourist woman
who writes on a postcard: "To the left
of the abandoned theater there's a lily and a mysterious
person. To the right, a modern city"
I am me, nothing else . . .
I am not one of Rome's followers, not a sentry
on the roads of salt. But I pay a percentage
of my bread's salt, coerced, and say to History:
Decorate your trucks with slaves and meek kings, and pass . . . no one
says no anymore

I am me, nothing else.
One of this night's people. I dream
of ascending higher with my horse
to follow the water spring behind the hill:
Persist, my horse, we no longer differ in the wind . . .
you're my youth and I'm your imagination. Straighten
like an Aleph, and stomp the lightning. Scratch the pans of echo
with desire's hoof. Rise, renew yourself, and stiffen
like an abandoned banner in the alphabet.
We no longer differ in the wind, straighten up
like an Aleph, fret and don't fall off the final slope.
You're my pretext, and I'm your metaphor
away from riders who are tamed like destinies.
Dash and dig my time in my place, horse. The place
is the road, and there is no road beside you,
and the wind is your shoe. Illuminate
the stars in the mirage. Illuminate the clouds in absence,
and be my brother and my lightning's guide.
Don't die before me, horse, or after me, or with me
on the final slope. And look inside the ambulances,
stare at the dead . . . I might still be living

I will dream . . . not to mend any outer meaning,
but to renovate my abandoned interior from the trace
of emotional drought. I have memorized all of my heart,
like the back of my hand: it's no longer meddlesome
and spoiled. One aspirin suffices to soften
and tranquilize it. As if it were my stranger neighbor.
I am not subject to its whim and women. The heart
rusts like iron and doesn't moan, yearn for, or become
mad over the first tender licentious rain,
it doesn't ring from drought like August grass.
As if my heart were austere, or extraneous
to me like the "like" in a simile.
When the heart's water dries up, the aesthetic
is more abstract, and emotions wrap themselves
in coats, virginity, and talent

And whenever I turned my face toward the first
songs I saw the trace of sand grouse
on the words. I wasn't a happy child to say:
Yesterday is always prettier.
But memory has two light hands that kindle
the land with fever. Memory has the scent
of a crying night flower that wakens in an exile's blood
his need for a chant: "Be my sorrow's
ascension and I will find my time" . . I need only
a seagull's flutter to follow the ancient ships.
How much time has passed since
we've discovered the twins: time
and natural death, the synonyms for life?
Yet we still live as if death aims at us
and misses us, and we who can remember
are able to liberate ourselves and follow
Gilgamesh's green footsteps
from one epoch to another

All creation is dust, in vain . . .
and absence breaks me like a small water urn.
Enkidu slept but didn't wake. My wings slept
wrapped in a fistful of his clay feathers. My G-ds
are the inanimate wind in imagination's land. My right arm
is a wooden stick. And the heart is abandoned
like a dried well where beastly echo
widens: Enkidu, my imagination is no longer
enough to finish my journey. I must have force
for my dream to be real. Give me my weapons
and I will polish them with the salt of tears. Bring the tears,
Enkidu, for the dead among us to cry
over the living. What am I? Who is the one sleeping now,
Enkidu? I or you? My G-ds
are like gripping the wind. So rise within me with all
your human recklessness, and dream of a small
equality between the G-ds of heaven and us. We are
the ones who build the beautiful earth between
the Tigris and Euphrates, and we memorize the names. How
did you become bored with me, my friend, and let me down?
What good is our wisdom without youth . . . what good is it?
At the entrance of the labyrinth you let me down, my friend,
and killed me, and it has become my duty to see
our destinies. Alone I carry life
on my shoulder like a raging bull. Alone,
with wandering steps, I search
for my eternity. I must solve this riddle, Enkidu, I will
carry for your life what I can, as much
as my strength and resolve will allow. Otherwise,
who am I alone? All creation is dust, in vain
around me. Yet I will prop up your naked shadow
on the palm trees. Where is your shadow?
Where is it after your trunks have been broken?

The height
of man
is an abyss . . .

I was unjust to you when I resisted the beast in you
with a woman who offered you her milk . . . you drank
and were merry, you surrendered to the good omen. Enkidu,
be kind to me and come back from where you died, we might
find the answer . . . for who am I alone?
One's life is incomplete, and I lack
the question, so who will I ask about crossing
the river? Get up, brother of salt,
and carry me. Do you know you're asleep
when you're sleeping? Get up, enough sleep!
Move before the sages accumulate like foxes
around me and say: "Everything is vain, win
your life for what it is, a brief impregnated
moment whose fluid drips
grass blood. Live for your day not
for your dream. Everything will vanish. Beware
of tomorrow and live life now in a woman
who loves you. Live for your body
not for your fantasy, and wait
for a boy who will carry your soul for you.
Because immortality is reproduction in being.
And everything is vain or vanishing
or vanishing and vain"

Who am I?
The Song of Songs
or the university's wisdom?
Both of us are me . . .
and I am a poet
and a king
and a sage on the well's edge,
no cloud in my hand,
no eleven planets
on my temple,
my body is fed up with me,
my eternity is fed up with me,
and my tomorrow
is sitting on my chair
like a crown of dust

Vanity, vanity of vanities . . . everything
on the face of the earth is a vanishing

The winds are northerly
and the winds are southerly,
the sun rises from itself
and sets in itself,
nothing's new,
and time
was yesterday,
in vain, in vain.
The temples are high,
the wheat is spiking high,
and the sky, when it's low, rains,
and the lands, when they rise, are desolate,
and everything that exceeds its limit
becomes its own opposite one day.
And life on earth is a shadow
we don't see . . .

Vanity, vanity of vanities . . . everything
on the face of the earth is a vanishing

1,400 vehicles
and 12,000 horses
bear my gilded name
from one epoch to another . . .
I lived as no other poet has lived,
a king and a sage . . .
I have aged, and I am bored with glory,
there's nothing I lack.
Is this then why
the more I know
the more my burden amasses?
What is Jerusalem and what's the throne?
Nothing remains as it is: there is
a time for birth,
a time for death,
a time for silence,
a time for speech,
a time for war,
a time for peace,
a time for time,
and nothing stays as it is . . .
the sea will drink each river,
and the sea is not full,
nothing stays as it is,
each living creature moves toward death,
and death is not full,
nothing remains except my gilded name after me:

"Solomon was" . . .
What will the dead do with their names?
Does gold illuminate
my vast darkness?
Would the Song of Songs
or the university
illuminate my vast darkness?

Vanity, vanity of vanities . . . everything
on the face of the earth is a vanishing . . .

And as Christ walked on the lake,
I walked in my vision. But I came down
from the cross because I have a fear of heights and don't
promise Resurrection. I only changed
my cadence to hear my heart clearly.
The epicists have falcons, and I have
The Collar of the Dove, an abandoned star on the roof,
and a winding street that leads to Akko's port,
no more and no less.
I want to cast the morning greeting
to myself where I left myself a happy boy
(I wasn't a lucky boy, but distance,
like two skilled ironsmiths,
can forge a moon out of petty iron).
- Do you know me?
I asked the shadow near the wall,
then a girl wearing fire noticed and asked:
Are you talking to me?
I said: I am talking to my twin ghost.
She mumbled: Another Majnoon Laila
is checking in on his ruins. Then she left for her shop
at the end of the old market . . .
We were right here. Two palm trees were carrying
letters of some poets to the sea . . .
We didn't age that much, my "I" and me. The maritime
scene, and the wall that defends our defeat,
and the scent of musk, all say: We're still here,
even if time separates from place.
And maybe we were never apart . . .
- So do you know me?
But the boy I lost cried:
We never parted, though we never met . . .
And he shut two sea waves within his arms
and soared high . . . So I asked:
Which one of us is the immigrant?

Then I met the prison warden by the western coast:
I asked: Are you the son of my first warden?
-Yes.
Where's your father?
-He died a few years ago. He became
depressed from the boredom of his watch
then bequeathed me his profession and task, and admonished
me to guard the city from your song . . .
I said: How long have you been watching me
and imprisoning yourself in me?
-Since you wrote your early songs.
I said: You weren't even born then.
-I have a time and an eternity,
and I want to live to America's cadence
and on Jerusalem's wall.
I said: Be who you are. But I have gone.
The one you see now isn't me, I am my ghost.
-Enough. Aren't you echo's
stony name, you neither went nor came,
and you're still
within this yellow prison cell
so leave me alone.
I said: Am I still here? Am I free or imprisoned,
unawares? And is the sea behind this wall mine?
-You're a prisoner, a prisoner
of yourself and your longing. And the one you see now
is not me. I too am my ghost.
So I said to myself: I am alive, then.
If two ghosts meet in the desert,
do they share the sand
or compete over the monopoly of night?

Akko's port clock was the only thing working.
No one cared about the time of night. The fishermen
were casting their nets for seafood, and braiding
the waves. And the lovers were at the clubs.
And the dreamers were petting the sleeping larks
and dreaming . . .
I said: If I die, I'll pay attention . . .
I have enough past
but I lack tomorrow . . .
I will walk on the old road over
my steps, on the sea air, without a woman
watching me from her balcony, without a memory
except for what's useful for the long journey.
There was always enough tomorrow
in the days. I was younger than
my butterflies and her two dimples:
Girl, take sleepiness from me and hide me
in the narrative and the sentimental evening /
hide me beneath one of the two palm trees /
teach me poetry / I might learn
wandering in Homer's ways / I might
add the description of Akko to the story /
the oldest beautiful city /
the loveliest old city / a stone box
where the dead and the living move
in its clay as if in a captive beehive /
laborers who strike against flowers and ask
the sea about the emergency exit
when the siege tightens / teach me poetry /
a woman might need some song
for her faraway / and she might say:
Take me to you, even if against my will,
and place my sleep in your hands /
and they'd go to echo in an embrace /
As if I have wed a fugitive doe
to a gazelle / as if I have opened the church
doors to the doves / teach me
poetry / A woman who wove the wool
shirt and waited at the door
deserves some talk about vastness / about
disappointment, and says: The warrior
did not come back, or won't, and you
are not the one I waited for . . . /

And as Christ walked on the lake,
I walked in my vision. But I came down
from the cross because I have a fear of heights and don't
promise Resurrection. I only changed
my cadence to hear my heart clearly . . .

The epicists have falcons, and I have
The Collar of the Dove, an abandoned star on the roof,
and a winding street that leads to the port . . .
And this sea is mine,
this humid air is mine,
this sidewalk and my steps
on it, my semen . . . mine.
And the old bus station. And mine
is my ghost and his companion. And the copper pot,
the Throne verse, and the key are mine.
And the door, the guards, the bells are mine. Mine
is the horseshoe that flew
over the walls . . . and what was mine
is mine. And the piece of paper that was torn
out of the Gospel is mine. The salt of tears
on the house walls, mine . . . and my name,
even if I mispronounce it
with five horizontal letters, is mine:
Meem / the infatuated, the orphaned, the finale of what has passed.
Ha / the garden and the beloved, two puzzles and two laments.
Meem / the adventurer, the readied and ready for his death,
the one promised exile, and desire's ill patient.
Waw / farewell, the middle rose, loyal to birth wherever possible,
and the pledge of parents.
Dal / the guide, the road, the tear of a meadow that has perished, and a house
sparrow that spoils me and bleeds me . . .
this name belongs to me and my friends
wherever they are . . .
and my temporary body, absent or present, is mine:
two meters of this dirt will suffice . . .
175 centimeters are mine . . .
and the rest belongs to flowers with chaotic colors
that drink me slowly, and what was mine
is mine: my yesterday. And what will be mine:
my distant tomorrow, and the return of the fugitive soul
as if nothing had happened,
as if nothing were
a scratch wound on the arm of the frivolous present . . .
and History mocks its victims
and its heroes . . .
it glances at them then passes . . .
and this sea is mine,
this humid air is mine,
and my name,
even if I misspell it on the coffin,
is mine.
But I,
now that I have become filled
with all the reasons of departure,
I am not mine
I am not mine
I am not mine . . .