Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? Read online

  That alone remembers its forests… the echo has a room

  Like my cell here: a room for talking to oneself,

  My cell is my picture I have not found around it anyone

  To share my coffee with me in the morning, no seat

  To share my exile in the evening, no scene

  To share my amazement for reaching the path.

  So let me be what the horses want in campaigns:

  Either a prince

  Or ruin!

  And my cell has widened out into a street, two streets, and this echo

  Is an echo, ominously propitiously, that I shall emerge from my wall

  As a free spirit emerges from itself as master

  And I shall go to Aleppo. O pigeon, fly

  With my rumiyya and bear to my cousin

  Greetings of the dew!

  From Sky to her Sister Dreamers Pass

  …and we left our childhood for the butterfly, when we left

  On the steps a little olive oil, but we

  Forgot to greet our mint around us, and we forgot

  A swift salute to our tomorrow after us…

  Noon’s ink was white, except for

  The butterfly’s writing around us…

  *

  O butterfly, O sister of yourself, be

  As you will, before my longing and after my longing.

  But take me as a brother to your wing let my madness stay

  With me hot! O butterfly, O mother

  Of yourself, leave me not to the boxes that the craftsmen have designed

  for me… leave me not!

  *

  From sky to her sister dreamers pass

  Carrying mirrors of water, a border for the butterfly.

  In our capacity to be

  From sky

  To her sister

  dreamers pass.

  *

  The butterfly weaves with the needle of light

  The ornament of its comedy

  The butterfly is born of itself

  And the butterfly dances in the fire of its tragedy

  *

  Half phoenix, what touches her touches us: a dark image

  Between light and fire… and between two ways

  No. It is not frivolous nor wisdom, our love

  Thus always… thus…

  From sky

  To her sister

  Dreamers pass…

  *

  The butterfly is water that longs to fly. It escapes

  From the sweat of girls, and grows in the cloud

  Of memories. The butterfly is not what the poem says,

  From excess lightness it breaks words, as

  A dream breaks dreamers…

  *

  Let be…

  And let our tomorrow be present with us

  And let our yesterday be present with us

  And let our day be present

  At the banquet of this day, prepared

  For the butterfly’s holiday, so that dreamers may pass

  From sky to her sister… in peace

  *

  From sky to her sister dreamers pass…

  Said the Traveller to the Traveller: We Shall not Return as…

  I do not know the desert,

  But I grew words on its edges…

  The words said what they had to say, and I passed

  Like a divorced woman I passed like her broken man,

  I remember only the rhythm

  I hear it

  And follow it

  And I raise it like a dove

  On the way to the sky,

  The sky of my songs,

  I am a son of the Syrian coast,

  I inhabit it on the move or residing

  Among the people of the sea,

  But the mirage draws me strongly to the east

  To the ancient Badu,

  I water fine horses,

  I feel the pulse of the alphabet in the echo,

  I come back a window on two directions.

  I am forgetting who I am so as to be

  A community in one, and a contemporary

  To the praises of foreign sailors under my windows,

  And the message of warriors to their relatives:

  We shall not come back as we went

  We shall not came back… not even from time to time!

  I do not know the desert

  However much I have visited its haunting space,

  In the desert unseen said to me:

  Write!

  So I said: On the mirage is another writing

  It said: Write to make the mirage green

  So I said: Absence is lacking me

  And I said: I have not yet learnt the words

  So it said to me: Write, that you may know them

  And know where you were, and where you are

  And how you came, and who you will be tomorrow,

  Put your name in my hand and write

  That you may know who I am, and go cloud-like

  Into space…

  So I wrote: Who writes his story inherits

  The land of words, and owns meaning totally!

  I do not know the desert,

  But I bid it goodbye

  To the tribe east of my song: goodbye

  To the race in its diversity on a sword: goodbye

  To my mother’s son under his palm tree: goodbye

  To the Mu’allaqa that preserved our planets: goodbye

  To peace on me: between two poems:

  A poem written

  And another whose poet died of passion!

  Am I?

  Am I there… or here?

  In every ‘you’ am I,

  I am you, the second person, it is not banishment

  That I be you. It is not banishment

  That you be my I yourself. It is not banishment

  That sea and desert be

  Songs of traveller to traveller:

  I shall not return, as I went,

  And I shall not return… not even from time to time!

  Rhyme for the Mu’allaqat

  No one guided me to myself. I am the guide, I am the guide

  To myself between sea and desert. From my language was born

  On the India road between two small tribes bearing

  The moon of ancient religions, and impossible peace

  They must preserve the Persian neighbouring star

  And the great anxiety of the Romans, so that heavy time may descend

  More abundant from the Arab’s tent. Who am I? This

  Is a question for others and has no answer. I am my own language,

  I am a mu’allaqa… two mu’allaqas… ten, This is my language

  I am my language. I am what was said by the words:

  Be

  My body, and so I was a body, for their rhythm. I am what

  I said to the words: Be a meeting point of my body and eternal desert

  Be so that I may be as I say!

  There is no ground save the ground that bears me, and so my words bear me

  Flying from me, and build the nest for which I am bound, before me

  In my ruins, the ruins of the magic world around me.

  On a breeze I stopped. The night seemed long

  …this language of mine is necklaces of stars about the necks

  Of lovers: they emigrated

  They took the place and emigrated

  They took time and emigrated

  They took their scents from the pots

  And the sparse grass and emigrated

  They took speech and the slain heart emigrated

  With them. Is the echo, this echo,

  This white mirage of sound, wide enough for a name whose

  Hoarseness fills the unknown and which emigration fills with divinity?

  Heaven is imposing a window on me and I look: I do not

  See anyone but myself…

  I found myself outside it

  Just as it was with me, and my
visions,

  Are not far from the desert,

  My steps are of wind and sand

  And my world is my body and what my hand holds

  I am the traveller and the road

  Gods watch over me and go, and we do not prolong

  Our talk of what is to come. There is no tomorrow in

  This desert except what we saw yesterday,

  So let me raise my mu’allaqa, so that circular time be broken

  And the beautiful time be born!

  No more shall the past come tomorrow

  I have left for itself my self full of its present

  Emigration has emptied me

  Of temples. Heaven has its peoples and its wars

  But I have the gazelle for spouse, the palm tree

  For mu’allaqat in the book of sand. What I see is passing

  A man has the kingdom of dust and its crown. So let my language conquer

  Time the enemy, my descendants,

  Myself, my father, and an unending extinction

  This is my language and my miracle. A magic wand.

  The gardens of Babylon and my obelisk, my first identity,

  And my polished metal

  And the Arab’s shrine in the desert,

  He worships rhymes flowing like stars on his cloak

  And worships what he says

  Prose is inevitable then,

  Divine prose is inevitable if the prophet is to conquer…

  The Sparrow, As It Is, As It Is…

  Ambiguity of tradition: this spilt twilight

  Calls me to its agility behind the glass

  Of the light. I do not often dream of you, sparrow.

  Wing does not dream of wing…

  And we are both anxious

  *

  You have what I have not: blueness is your mate

  And your refuge the return of wind to wind,

  So hover above me! As the spirit in me thirsts

  For the spirit, and applaud the days that your feathers weave,

  And abandon me if you wish

  For my house, narrow as my words

  *

  Well it knows the roof, as a joyous guest,

  Well it knows the trough of speedwell which sits, like a grandmother, in

  A window… It knows where the water and the bread are,

  And where the trap is set for mice…

  It shakes its wings like the shawl of a woman slipping away from us,

  And the blueness flies…

  *

  Fickle like me, this fickle celebration

  Scrapes the heart and throws it on the straw,

  Does any trembling remain in the silver

  Vessel for one day?

  And my post is void of any comedy,

  You will come: sparrow, however

  Narrow the earth, however wide the horizon

  *

  What is it that your wings take from me?

  Strain, and vaporize like a reckless day,

  A grain of wheat is necessary so that

  The feather be free. What is it that my looking glasses

  Take from you? My spirit must have

  A sky, for the absolute to see it

  *

  You are free. And I am free. We both love

  The absent. So press down so that I may rise. And rise

  So than I may descend, O sparrow! Give me the bell

  Of light, and I will give you the house inhabited by time.

  We complete each other,

  Between sky and sky,

  When we part!

  V.

  Rain Over the

  Church Tower

  Helen, What Rain

  I met Helen, on Tuesday

  At three o’clock

  The time of endless boredom

  But the sound of the rain

  With a woman like Helen

  Is a song of travel

  Rain,

  What longing… longing of the sky

  For itself!

  Rain,

  What a howling… the howling of wolves

  For their kind!

  Rain on the roof of dryness,

  The gilded dryness in church icons,

  – How far is the earth from me?

  And how far is love from you?

  The stranger says to the breadseller, Helen,

  In a street narrow as her sock,

  – No more than an utterance… and rain!

  Rain hungry for trees…

  Rain hungry for stone…

  And the stranger says to the breadseller:

  Helen Helen! Is the scent of bread now rising

  From you to a balcony

  In a distant land… .

  To replace Homer’s sayings?

  Does water rise from your shoulders

  To a dried-up tree in a poem?

  She says to him: What rain

  What rain!

  And the stranger says to Helen: I lack

  A narcissus to gaze into the water,

  Your water, in my body. Gaze

  Helen, into the water of our dreams… you will find

  The dead on your banks who sing your name:

  Helen… Helen! Do not leave us

  Alone as the moon

  – What rain

  – What rain

  And the stranger says to Helen: I was fighting

  In your trenches and you were not innocent of my Asian blood.

  And you will not be innocent of obscure blood

  In the veins of your rose. Helen!

  How cruel the Greeks of that time were,

  And how savage was Ulysses, who loved travel

  Seeking his tale in travel!

  Words that I did not say to her

  I have spoken. The words I spoke

  I have not spoken to Helen. But Helen knows

  What the stranger does not say…

  And she knows what the stranger says to a scent

  Which is broken under the rain,

  And she says to him:

  The Trojan War did not happen

  It never happened

  Never…

  What rain

  What rain!

  A Night Which Flows from the Body

  Jasmine on a July night, song

  Of two strangers who meet on a street

  Which leads to no purpose…

  Who am I after two almond eyes? The stranger says

  Who am I after your banishment in me? The strange woman says.

  So good let us be careful so as not to

  Move the salt of the ancient seas in a remembering body…

  She used to return to him a hot body,

  And he used to return to her a hot body.

  This is how strange lovers leave their love

  Chaotically, as they leave their underclothes

  Among the flowers of the sheets…

  – If you really love me, make

  A Song of Songs for me, and carve my name

  On the trunk of a pomegranate tree in the gardens of Babylon…

  –If you really love me put

  My dream into my hand. And say to him, to Maryam’s son,

  How did you do to us what you did to yourself,

  O Lord, have we any justice that would suffice

  To make us just tomorrow?

  How can I be cured of the jasmine tomorrow?

  How can I be cured of the jasmine tomorrow?

  They sit sulky together in a shadow which spreads on

  The ceiling of his room: Don’t look distracted

  After my breasts – she said to him…

  He said: your breasts are night that illuminate the necessary

  Your breasts are a night which kisses me, and we are filled

  And the place with a night which overflows the glass…

  She laughs at his description. Then she laughs more

  As she hides nightfall in her hand…

  – My love, if it had been my l
ot

  That I were a young man… it is you I would have been

  – And had it been my lot that I were a girl

  It is you I would have been!…

  And she weeps, as is her way, when she returns

  From a wine-coloured heaven: Take me

  To a land where I have no blue bird

  Over a willow tree, O stranger!

  And she weeps, to cut through her forests in the long journey

  To herself: Who am I?

  Who am I after your banishment from my body?

  Alas for me, and for you, and for my land

  – Who am I after two almond eyes?

  Show me my tomorrow!…

  That is how lovers leave their farewell

  Chaotically, like the scent of jasmine on the July night…

  Every July the jasmine carries me to

  A street, which leads to no purpose

  While I continue my song:

  Jasmine

  On

  A night

  In July…

  For the Gypsy, an Experienced Sky

  You are leaving the air sick on the mulberry tree,

  But I

  Shall walk to the sea, how do I breathe

  Why did you do what you did… why

  Were you weary of living, O gypsy,

  In the Iris quarter?

  *

  We have the gold you want and frivolous blood

  In the races. Knock the heel of your shoe

  Against the icon of being and birds come down to you. There

  Are angels… and an experienced sky, so do what

  You want! Break hearts as a nutcracker

  And out comes the blood of steeds!

  *

  Your poetry has no homeland. The wind has no house. I have no

  Ceiling in the chandelier of your heart.

  From a smiling lilac around your night

  I find my way alone through alleys as thin as hair.