Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? Read online

  Naked of protectors

  Knew neither my grandfather nor his sons

  Who stand now around the ‘Nūn’

  In the Surrat ‘al-Rahman’.

  O God… So bear witness!

  *

  He was one born of himself

  Buried alive, near the fire,

  In himself,

  So let him grant to the phoenix of his burnt

  Secret what it needs after him

  To light the lanterns in the temple

  *

  In the olive groves, east of the springs

  Grandfather has withdrawn into his lonely shadow.

  The sun does not rise on his shadow.

  On his shadow, no shadow falls

  And Grandfather forever, is far away…

  Houriyyah’s Teachings

  I

  One day I thought of travelling, and a goldfinch settled on

  Her hand and fell asleep. It was enough that I caress a branch of a vineyard

  In haste… for her to understand that my wine glass

  Was full. Enough that I go to bed early for her to see

  My dream clearly, and spend her night watching over it…

  Enough that a letter come from me for her to know that

  My address had changed, above the corridors of prisons, and that

  My days circled around her… and about her

  II

  My mother counts my twenty fingers and toes from afar.

  She combs my hair in the golden strand of her own hair. She seeks

  In my underwear for foreign women,

  She darns my torn socks. I did not grow up at her hand

  As we wished: I and she, we parted company at the slope

  Of the marble… clouds signalled to us, and to a goat

  That will inherit the place. Exile has set up for us two Languages:

  A spoken… so that the dove can understand it and preserve the memory

  And a formal language… so that I can interpret her shadow to the shadows!

  III

  I live still in your ocean. You did not say what

  A mother says to her sick child. I was sick from the brass moon

  On the tents of the Badu. Do you remember

  The road we took when we fled to Lebanon, where you forgot me:

  And forgot the bread-bag (it was wheaten bread).

  And I did not shout so as not to waken the guards.

  The scent of dew put me on your shoulders. O gazelle who lost

  There her home and her mate…

  IV

  Around you there was no time for sentimental talk.

  You kneaded all the noontide with basil. You baked

  The cockscomb for the sumac. I know what ruins your heart, pierced

  By the peacock, since you were driven a second time from Paradise.

  Our whole world has changed, our voices have changed. Even

  Our greeting to each other dropped off like a button on sand,

  Making no sound. Say: Good morning!

  Say anything to me so that life may be kind to me.

  V

  She is Hagar’s sister. Her maternal sister. She weeps

  With the reed pipes the dead who have not died. There are no graves around

  Her tent to show how the sky opened up, and she does not

  See the desert behind my fingers: so as to see her garden

  on the face of the mirage, old time hurries her on

  To an inevitable futility: her father flew like

  A Circassian on the marriage steed. But her mother

  Prepared, without tears, for her husband’s wife,

  Her henna, and checked out her anklets…

  VI

  We only meet to take our leave of each other when our talk converges.

  She says to me, for instance: Marry any woman,

  So long as she is foreign, more beautiful than the local girls. But, do not

  Trust any woman but me. Do not always trust

  Your memories. Do not burn to enlighten your mother,

  That is her honourable trade. Do not long for the promises

  Of dew. Be realistic as the sky. Do not long

  For your grandfather’s black cloak, or your grandmother’s

  Many bribes, be as free in the world as a foal.

  Be who you are, where you are. Carry

  Only the burden of your heart… Come back when

  Your land has widened into the land, and has changed its conditions…

  VII

  My mother lights the last stars of Canaan

  Around my looking glass,

  And throws into my last poem her shawl!

  Ivory Combs

  From the fortress the clouds drift down, blue,

  Onto the alleyways…

  The silk shawl flies

  And the flock of pigeons flies

  And on the face of the water of the pool the sky moves a little and flies.

  And my spirit flies, like a worker-bee, among the alleyways

  And the sea eats its bread, bread of Acre

  And polishes its seal, as it has for five thousand years

  And throws its cheek against its cheek

  Ritual of long, long marriage

  *

  The poem says:

  Let us wait

  Until the window comes down

  Over ‘the album’ of this tour guide

  *

  I enter by way of her stone armpit, as

  A wave enters eternity, I cross

  The centuries as if crossing from room to room

  I see in myself the familiar contents of time:

  A Canaanite girl’s looking glass,

  Combs of ivory,

  An Assyrian soup bowl,

  The sword of the man who guarded his Persian master’s sleep,

  The sudden leap of falcons from one flag to another

  Over the masts of fleets…

  *

  If I had another present

  I might own the keys of my yesterday

  And if my yesterday were here

  I might own all of my tomorrow…

  *

  Obscure is my progress up the long alleyway

  Leading to an obscure moon over the copper market.

  Here a palm tree relieves me of the load of the tower,

  And thought of songs carries simple tools

  Around me, to make a recurrent tragedy, and imagination

  A starving pedlar, roaming comfortably over the dust,

  As if I were unconcerned with what would happen

  To me at Julius Caesar’s festivities… before long!

  I and my beloved are drinking

  The water of happiness

  From one cloud

  And falling into one jar!

  *

  I disembarked at her port, nothing except

  That my mother lost her kerchiefs here…

  No tale for me here. I change

  Gods or negotiate with other gods. No tale for me here

  That I should burden my memory with barley

  And names of her guards who stand at my shoulder

  Waiting for the dawn of Tuthmosis. I have no sword,

  No tale for me here that I should divorce the mother who

  Gave me her kerchiefs to carry, each a cloud, a cloud over

  The old part of Acre… on departure!

  *

  Other things will happen,

  Henri will deceive

  Qalawun, after a while

  Clouds will rise red above the serried date palms…

  Phases of Anat

  Poetry is our stairway to a moon which Anat hangs

  Over her garden, like a looking glass for lovers without hope, and she wanders

  Over the wilderness of herself, two women unreconciled:

  There is a woman who can turn water back to its spring.

  And a woman who sets fire to forests,

 
As for steeds

  Let them dance for long over two abysses.

  No death there… and no life.

  My poem is froth of a gasping man, the scream of an animal

  At its climbing up

  And at its naked fall: Anat!

  I want both of you together, love and war, Anat

  And to Hell with me… I love you, Anat!

  And Anat is killing herself

  In herself

  And for herself

  And recreates space so that creatures can pass

  In front of her distant picture over Mesopotamia

  Over Syria. All directions are conform

  About the sceptre of lapis lazuli and the seal of the virgin: Do not

  Delay in this lower world. Come back from there

  To nature and natures, Anat!

  The water of the well dried up after you, valleys dried up,

  The rivers dried up after your death. Tears

  Evaporated from a pottery jar, and the air snapped

  From dryness like a piece of wood. We broke like the fence

  On your departure. Desires dried up in us. Prayer

  Has been calcified. Nothing lives after your death. Life

  Dies, like words between two travelling to hell,

  O Anat

  Tarry no longer in the lower world! Perhaps

  New goddesses have come down to us because of your going away

  And we have become subject to the mirage, perhaps the cunning shepherds

  Have found a goddess, near the dust, and priestesses have believed in her

  So come back, and bring back, bring back the land of truth

  And allusion

  The land of Canaan, the origin.

  The common land of your breasts,

  The common land of your thighs

  so that miracles may return

  To Jericho,

  At the door of the abandoned temple… No

  Death there and no life

  Chaos at the door of judgement. No tomorrow

  Comes. No past comes to say goodbye.

  No memories

  Fly from the direction of Babylon above our palm tree, no

  Dream entertains us, so as to appease a star

  Which is a button of your dress, O Anat

  And Anat creates herself

  From herself

  And for herself

  And flies after the Greek ships,

  Under another name,

  Two women who will never be reconciled…

  And the steeds,

  Let them dance long over two abysses. No

  Death there and no life

  There I neither live nor die

  Neither does Anat

  Neither does Anat!

  The Death of the Phoenix

  In the songs we sing

  Is a reed pipe,

  In the reed pipe which lives in us

  Is fire,

  And in the fire we kindle

  Is a green phoenix,

  And in the phoenix’s dirge I do not know

  My ashes from your dust

  A cloud of lilac is enough

  To hide

  The hunter’s tent from us. So walk

  On the water, like the Lord – she said to me:

  There is no desert in the memory I have of you

  And no enemies from now on for the rose

  That bursts forth from the ruins of your house!

  *

  There was water like a ring around

  The high mountain. Tiberias was

  A back yard of the first garden,

  And I said: The image of the world

  Is completed in a pair of green eyes

  She said: My prince and my prisoner

  Put my wines in your jars

  *

  The two strangers who burned in us

  Are those

  Who wanted to kill us a short while ago

  And are those

  Who are returning to their swords after a short while

  And are those

  Who say to us: Who are you two?

  We are shadows of what we were here, two names

  for the wheat which sprouts in the bread of battles

  *

  I do not want to retreat now, as

  The Crusaders retreated from me, I am

  All this silence between the two sides: the gods

  On one side,

  And those who created their names

  On the other side,

  I am the shadow which walks on water

  I am the witness and the spectacle

  The worshipper and the temple

  In the land of my siege and your siege

  *

  Be my love between two wars on the looking glass –

  She said – I do not want to retreat now to

  My father’s fort… Take me to your vineyard and unite me

  With your mother, perfume me with basil-water, sprinkle me

  On the silver vessels, comb me, and bring me into

  The prison of your name, kill me with love,

  Marry me, and marry me to the traditions of farming,

  Train me to play the reed pipe, and burn me so that I may be born,

  Like the phoenix, from my fire and your fire!

  *

  There was something like the phoenix

  Weeping blood,

  Before it fell in the water,

  Near to the hunter’s tent…

  What is the point of my waiting or your waiting?

  IV.

  A Room for Talking

  to the Self

  Poetic Steps

  The Stars had no role,

  But to

  Teach me to read:

  I have a language in the sky

  And on earth I have a language

  Who am I? Who am I?

  *

  I do not want the answer here

  Perhaps a star has fallen on its picture

  Perhaps the top of the chestnut has taken me up

  Towards the galaxy by night,

  And said: Here you shall stay!

  *

  The poem is far above, and is able

  To teach me what it wants

  How to open the window

  And manage my domestic affairs

  Among the legends. It is able

  To marry me itself… for a time

  *

  My father is downstairs, carrying an olive tree

  A thousand years old,

  Neither Eastern

  Nor Western.

  Sometimes he rests from the conquerors.

  And is affectionate towards me

  And gathers the iris for me

  *

  The poem is far from me,

  And enters the port of sailors who love wine

  And who never return twice to a woman,

  And who have no longing for anything

  And no worries!

  *

  I have not yet died of love

  But a mother who sees the glances of her son

  In the carnation and fears the damage of the vase,

  Then weeps to avert an accident

  Before the accident has happened

  Then weeps to bring me back from the road of the traps

  Alive, to live here

  *

  The poem is betwixt and between, and is able

  To illuminate nights with a girl’s breasts,

  And it is able to illuminate with an apple two bodies,

  And it is able to bring back,

  With the cry of a gardenia, a homeland!

  *

  The poem is in front of me, and is able

  To set in motion the matters of legend,

  By hand, but I,

  Since I found the poem, have exiled myself

  And have asked it:

  Who am I

  Who am I?

  From the Rumiyyat of Abu Firas al-Hamadani

&n
bsp; An echo returns. A wide street in the echo

  Steps interspersed with the sound of coughing,

  They are nearing the door, gradually, then moving away

  From the door. There are people who are visiting us

  Tomorrow, Thursday is for visits. There is our shadow

  In the passageway, and our sun in the baskets

  Of fruit. There is a mother scolding our jailers:

  Why have you poured our coffee on the grass.

  You wretch? And there is the salt-scent of sea,

  There is a sea that breathes salt. My cell

  Has widened by a centimetre for the sound of the pigeon: Fly

  To Aleppo, pigeon, fly with my rumiyya

  Bearing my greetings to my cousin!

  An echo

  Of the echo. The echo has a metal ladder, transparency, moisture

  That fills with those who go up it to their dawn… and those

  Who come down to their graves through the holes in space…

  Take me with you to my language! I said:

  What benefits people is what dwells on the words of the poem,

  While drums float like foam on their skins

  And my cell has widened, in the echo, to became a balcony

  Like the dress of the girl who accompanied me in vain

  To the balconies of the train, and who said: My father

  Does not like you. My mother likes you. So beware of Sodom tomorrow

  And do not expect me, Thursday morning, I do not

  Like the density when it conceals me in its prison

  The movements of meaning and leave me a body