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  Friend how have I bored you?

  And you’ve left me

  Without youth’s zeal wisdom is useless

  You killed me my friend when you left me at the door of the labyrinth

  Now it’s up to me alone to watch over our fate

  and like a love-furious bull carry the world on my shoulders

  I have to find alone an exit from the footsteps of my destiny

  I have to solve the riddle Enkidu

  Myself my will and my strength are yours

  I will carry your life to your place

  So who am I alone

  surrounded by Being’s perfect nothingness?

  Notwithstanding

  I lean your naked shadow against a date palm

  But where is your shadow?

  After your trunk broke where is your shadow?

  Man’s summit

  is his

  abyss

  I was unfair when I confronted the beast in you

  with a woman’s milk

  Quenching you I tamed you …

  and you surrendered to my humanity.

  Enkidu be a friend and return to where you died

  perhaps there we’ll find the answer

  For who am I alone?

  A lone life is missing something

  and I’m missing the question

  Who can I ask about the river’s passing?

  So wake up my brother of salt

  Carry me

  When you’re sleeping do you notice?

  Wake up

  You’re sleeping!

  Move before the wise men surround me like jackals

  All is vanity

  so seize your life as it is

  an instant full of the demands of rising sap

  Live for this day not for your dream

  everything is ephemeral

  Beware of tomorrow and live today in a woman who loves you

  live for your body not your illusion

  And wait

  A child will carry your soul in your place

  immortality is procreation nothing less

  everything is vain or ephemeral

  ephemeral or vain

  Who am I?

  The Song of Songs?

  or the wisdom of Ecclesiastics?

  You and I are me

  I’m poet

  and king

  and a wise man at the edge of the well

  No cloud in my open hand

  in my temple no eleven planets

  my body narrow

  my eternity narrow

  and my tomorrow sitting like a crown of dust on my throne

  Vain vanity of vanities … vain

  Everything on earth is ephemeral

  The winds are north

  the winds are south

  The sun rises by itself and sets by itself

  nothing is new

  The past was yesterday

  futile in futility

  The temple is high

  and the wheat is high

  If the sky comes down it rains

  and if the land rises up it’s destroyed

  Anything that goes beyond its limits will become its opposite one day

  And life on earth is a shadow of something we can’t see

  Vain vanity of vanities … vain

  Everything on earth is ephemeral

  1,400 chariots

  12,000 horses

  Carry my gilded name from one age to another

  I lived as no other poet

  a king and sage

  I grew old and bored with glory

  I didn’t lack for anything

  Is this why the more my star rose the more my anxiety grew?

  So what’s Jerusalem and what’s a throne

  if nothing remains forever?

  There’s a time for birth

  and a time for death

  A time for silence

  and a time for speech

  A time for war

  and a time for peace

  and a time for time

  nothing remains forever

  Each river will be drunk by the sea

  and the sea still is not full

  Nothing remains forever

  everything living will die

  and death is still not full

  Nothing will remain after me except a gilded name:

  “Solomon was … ”

  So what do the dead do with their names?

  Is it the gold

  or the song of songs

  or the Ecclesiastes

  who will illuminate the vastness of my gloom?

  Vain vanity of vanities … vain

  everything on earth is ephemeral

  I saw myself walking like Christ on the lake

  but I came down from the cross because of my fear of heights

  and I don’t preach the resurrection

  All that I changed was my pace the better to hear the voice of my heart

  Eagles are for bards

  for me the dove’s collar

  a star abandoned above the roof

  and a winding alley in Akka leading to the port

  nothing more or less

  I want to say good morning there to the happy boy I was

  Happy child I was not

  But distance is a brilliant blacksmith who can forge a moon from worthless scrap

  You know me?

  I ask a shadow against the walls

  A young girl wearing fire takes note and says:

  You speaking to me?

  No, I reply, I’m speaking to my double

  Another Majnun Layla inspecting ruins, she mutters

  and disappears into her shop at the end of the suq

  It was here

  we were

  two date palms

  relaying to the sea the messages of certain poets

  Neither me nor I have grown up much

  The seascape the ramparts defending our defeat

  the hint of incense

  announce we are still here

  even if time has gone from the place

  we can never be separated

  So you know me? shouts the me I left

  We can’t be split and we have never met

  Then he ties two small waves to his arms and soars high into the sky

  and I ask: which of us migrated?

  I asked a jailer on the western shore: are you the son of my old jailer?

  Yes indeed

  Where’s your father?

  He replied: Father died years ago laid low with the boredom of guarding

  He left me his profession and told me to guard the town against your songs

  I said: how long have you been surveying me and imprisoning yourself?

  He replied: since you wrote your first one

  I said: but you weren’t born yet!

  He said: I have time and eternity I want to live to the rhythm of America within the walls of Jerusalem

  I said: whoever you are – I’m leaving

  and the me you see now isn’t me I’m just a ghost

  He said: you’re an echo in a stone nothing more

  that’s why you never left or stayed

  that’s why you’re still in your yellowed cell

  so let me get on with my work!

  I said: am I still here freed or captured without knowing it?

  Is the sea behind the walls my sea?

  He said: you’re a prisoner, prisoner of yourself and nostalgia!

  The me you see isn’t me – I am my ghost

  So I say speaking to myself : I am alive

  and I ask: If two ghosts meet in the desert do they share the sand

  or fight for monopoly of the night?

  The clock in the port ticks on

  No one notices its time at night

  The fishermen of the generous sea cast their nets and plait the waves

  the lovers are in the discotheque

  Dreamers caress sleeping larks
>
  and dream

  I said: If I died I would wake up

  I have more than enough of the past

  but not enough of tomorrow …

  I will walk in my footsteps down the old path through the sea air

  no woman will see me passing under her balcony

  I have of memories only those necessary for the long journey

  Days contain all they need of tomorrows

  I was smaller than my eyelashes and my two dimples

  So take my sleepiness

  and hide me in the story of the tender evening

  Hide me under one of the two date palms

  and teach me poetry

  So I can learn how to walk beside Homer

  So I can add to the story a description of Akka

  the oldest of the beautiful cities

  the most beautiful of the old cities

  A box of stone

  where the living and dead move in the dry clay

  like bees captive in a honeycomb in a hive

  and each time the siege tightens

  they go on a flower hunger strike

  and ask the sea to indicate the emergency exit

  Teach me poetry

  in case a girl needs a song

  for her distant beloved:

  Take me to you even by force and prepare my bed in your hands

  And they walked interlaced towards the echo

  as though I had married a runaway fawn to a gazelle

  and opened the church door for the pigeons

  Teach me poetry

  She who spun the wool shirt

  and waits by the door

  is first to speak of the horizon and despair:

  The fighter hasn’t returned and won’t return

  and you are not the you I was waiting for

  I saw myself like Christ on the lake …

  But I came down from the cross because of my fear of heights

  and I don’t preach the apocalypse

  all that I changed was my pace the better to hear the voice of my heart …

  Eagles are for bards

  for me

  the dove’s collar

  a star abandoned on the roof

  and a winding alley leading to the port

  This sea is mine

  This sea air is mine

  This quayside with my footsteps and sperm upon it … is mine

  And the old bus station is mine

  And my ghost and its master are mine

  And the copper utensils and the verse of the throne

  and the key are mine

  And the door and the guards and bells are mine

  The horseshoe flung over the ramparts is mine

  All that was mine is mine

  Paper scraps torn from the gospels are mine

  Salt from the tears on the wall of the house are mine …

  And my name mispronounced with its five horizontal letters

  my name … is mine:

  mim/ of lovesickness of the orphan of those who complete the past

  ha/ of the garden and love, of two muddles and two losses

  mim/ of the rake of the lovesick of the exile prepared for a death foretold

  waw/ of farewells of the central flower of fidelity to birth wherever it may be and of a parent’s promise

  dal/ of the guide of the path of tears of a studied galaxy and a sparrow who cajoles me and makes me bleed

  This name is mine …

  and also my friends’ wherever they may be

  And my temporary body is mine

  present or absent …

  Two metres of this earth will be enough for now

  a metre and 75 centimetres for me

  and the rest for flowers in a riot of colour

  who will slowly drink me

  And what was mine is mine: my yesterday

  and what will be in the distant tomorrow in the return of the fugitive soul

  as if nothing has been

  and as if nothing has been

  A light wound on the arm of the absurd present

  History taunting its victims

  and its heroes …

  throwing them a glance and passing on

  This sea is mine

  This sea air is mine

  And my name – if I mispronounce it on my coffin – is mine

  And as for me – full of all reasons for leaving –

  I am not mine

  I am not mine

  I am not mine

  The Dice Player

  Who am I to say to you

  what I’m saying?

  I wasn’t a stone washed by water

  so I became a face

  I wasn’t a reed pierced by the wind

  so I became a flute

  I’m the way the dice fall

  sometimes winning sometimes losing

  I’m like you

  or maybe slightly less …

  I was born beside the well

  where three single trees stood like nuns

  I was born without ceremony or a midwife

  and belonged to a family

  by chance

  inheriting its features, idiosyncrasies

  and illnesses:

  First: feeble arteries and high blood pressure

  Second: shyness in talking with mother, father, grandmother – or a tree

  Third: the belief that flu can be cured with a hot cup of chamomile

  Fourth: a disinclination to talk about gazelles or skylarks

  Fifth: a tendency to boredom on winter nights

  Sixth: a farcical inability to sing

  I had no say in who I was

  It was by chance I turned out

  male

  by chance that I found the upturned moon

  pale as a lemon

  urging on the night

  and just as easily

  could find a mole hidden in the deepest recess of my groin

  It’s possible

  I might not have been

  and my father might not have been

  then he wouldn’t have married my mother

  by chance

  I might have been like my sister

  who screamed then died and never knew it

  because she lived for an hour and didn’t know her mother …

  Or one could say: like a pigeon’s egg which breaks before the chick can hatch from its shell

  I happened by chance

  me the survivor of the bus accident

  because I was late going to school

  forgetting the here and now

  while reading a love story at night

  losing myself in story-teller and victim of love

  til I became a martyr of passion in the story

  and the survivor of the bus accident!

  I can’t see myself joking with the sea

  but I am a reckless kid

  one of my hobbies is to dawdle in the waves

  when they’re singing: Come to me!

  And I can’t see myself being rescued from the sea

  I was saved by a sort of seagull

  who saw the playful waves paralyzing my hand

  It’s possible

  I wouldn’t have been struck with the madness of the Jahili Mu’alaqaat2

  if the door of the house had faced North

  and not overlooked the sea

  if the army patrol hadn’t seen the fire of the villagers making bread that night

  if 15 martyrs had been able to rebuild the barricades

  if that rural place hadn’t been obliterated

  perhaps I’d have become an olive tree

  or a geography teacher

  or an expert in the realm of ants

  or guardian of an echo!

  who am I to say to you

  what I’m saying

  at the door of the church

  I’m nothing but the fall of the dice

  landing between predator and prey

  winning a
clarity that obscures my happiness on moonlit nights

  and obliges me to witness the carnage

  It was by chance

  I escaped

  I was smaller than a military target

  and larger than a bee hovering between the flowers on the fence

  I feared a lot for my brothers and father

  feared for time made of glass

  feared for my cat and my rabbit

  feared for the magical moon above the high minaret of the mosque

  feared for the grapes on the vine dangling like the teats of our dog

  Fear walked in me and I walked in it

  barefoot

  forgetting my little memories or what I want from tomorrow

  – there’s no time for tomorrow –

  I walk, scramble, run, climb, get down, scream, bark, howl, call out, wail, speed up, slow down, love, become lighter, drier, march on, fly, see, don’t see, stumble, become yellow, green, blue, gasp, sob, thirst, get tired, struggle, fall, get up, run, forget, see, don’t see, remember, hear, look, wonder, hallucinate, mumble, yell I can’t, moan, go mad, stay, become less and more, fall, rise, collapse, bleed and faint

  And by chance

  with my lack of luck

  the wolves disappeared from there

  or we escaped the soldiers

  I have no say in my life

  except that I am

  when life taught me its hymns

  I said: do you have more?

  so I lit its lantern

  and it tried to oblige

  I might not have been a swallow

  if the wind had wanted it that way

  the wind is the luck of the traveler

  I went north, east and west

  but the south was far and impenetrable to me

  because the south is my home

  So I became a metaphor of a swallow soaring above my debris

  in Spring and Autumn

  trying out my feathers in the clouds above the lake

  scattering my greetings on my protector

  who does not die

  because he has God’s soul

  and God is the luck of the prophet

  Luckily I live next to the divinities

  Unluckily

  the cross is the only ladder to our tomorrow

  Who am I to say to you

  what I’m saying

  Who am I?

  It’s possible

  inspiration might not have come

  inspiration is the luck of the loner

  this poem is a dice throw

  onto a board of darkness

  that glows and doesn’t glow

  words fall

  like feathers on sand

  I don’t think it was me who wrote the poem

  I just obeyed its rhythm:

  the flow of feelings each affecting the next

  meaning given by intuition

  a trance in the echoing words

  the image of myself taken from me and given to another

  with no one to help me