The Crystalline Chime
How could she boil milk before going to the gas?
The beam was close to the head
And the daughter was crying on a pillow in the bed
And her beloved on a distant path with poetry,
crying and drinking.
She would prepare pastries, cheese and oranges
build her chimes out of crystal
expose a chasm for the distance.
She loved him
her gealousy a tame monster
knowing that truth comes to her
So she weeps, and burns what the poet leaves
She weeps and shatters the singer's voice
bans him from her wine
He turned to the silky bud
And the dark of the glass.
He was the father that departed
the fulfilling beloved
the sorcerer who sent sad alphabets
to return a flower in the mailbox.
From shadows and boiling anger
Rise poems of this jealous poetess.
Messages from the gods of the heavens glide to her
she knows that the years are a void in the hollow of her days
There is no shade during day or night.
Her red resembles my wound.
Her fantasies like the clouds of a sunset
Dense and crimson.
Her strides like the severing of a vein.
The brutality of a suicidal before pouring his foam
she composed about her father.
The novel is an omen,
Vicious, and invading without permission
during the rush of a chill.
What to confess after the admissions
of a compassionate woman,
who had regarded herself a photographic negative
of a foreign entity.
And whom she exchanged madness with resembles her
- every part includes his other, to complete the features -
she submitted to the epic because of
the years that fractured her sculpture.
So let the sea revive his plays.
After thirty years
Her beloved poet returns
To slaughter the silence
that is a tiger
and carry the head of this myth.
These are the letters of Christmas,
Some of his betrayals, mornings of intoxicants,
Virginity of the beach, blaze in white sheets
And her image in iron.
Who will read her poems
Before her daughter grows up?
Or before her neighbor’s tears smiled as he gave her a candle?
Or before her beloved strolls on snow?
Or renders the waves honey whence her naval touches the ice?
A poet resurrected from her death
whom she loved
But astray,
and sad.
The Poster
When I walk he is poised in a prophetic tranquility
As if butterflies passed by his lips and yielded a smile
and the sun tossed her gauzy robe on his face and made it blush,
and the almond buds ripened in his eyes and made them widen.
They placed him on a wall
on every door, trunk, sad mosque, sealed window, and arch,
inscribed on his chest a holy verse.
In every path I walk I see him like I did before,
His charisma like a statue of light beaming on
every road, column and corner.
Whenever I walk, I see him
smiling at me, or so I imagine,
his teeth shining.
In his face I gaze
realizing a murdered person is grinning at me.
I grin back.
And wherever I see him smiling at me, I smile back.
Those watching think I am mad,
not knowing I am smiling at my friend.
I don’t know if he was martyred or killed
by a brother, or in the chaos
that brought poverty and fear.
I fear for him from the strength
of the sun’s rays or gushing rains.
Bewildered, how can I protect him,
my friend, from the sun, the rain or a hand that may tear him
off the wall and throw him into a waste basket?
I know that my friend remains awake
while the entire city sleeps,
as if by his open eyes he guards the city.
I know sooner or later he will leave me,
and the colors of his features will not survive eternity.
I may be sad over my friend. Every morning
a child goes to school carrying his school bag,
waving at a poster on a wall.
I think the map of a stolen land is in his school bag.
A
Lonely Women
Alone like Eve, among creation, I did not find
Anything but the winds, the trees and the stones.
I walk and only hear the echoes of my steps
my eyes arrows piercing space
Maybe I entrance monsters
While walking, perhaps I'll find Adam
So I may feel I found my Adam
But he is not there.
So I wrap myself in the sun
And with the moon
cover what lies above my legs.
A Recurring Scene
Who is this?
What is the name of this bloody, arrogant creature?
No languages suffice,
And nothing is equal to his barbarity.
None can comprehend or describe what is happening.:
A psychotic creature clutching his insane rifle
Pointing at a pregnant woman to retreat,
Her blood seeping through her gown,
Her screams muffled through her scarf.
Her child appearing at a checkpoint.
After this
They ask: Why?
Where
No one has chiseled my rock
And awakened the pearl of my delta.
I am a moan from a lost flute
I am a wave that rushed to the beach
Because there is neither sailor, oar nor water.
And there is nowhere.
A Lonely Women
Alone like Eve, among creation, I did not find
Anything but the winds, the trees and the stones.
As I walk I only hear the echoes of my steps
And my eyes arrows piercing space
Maybe I entrance monsters
While walking, perhaps I'll find Adam
So I may feel I found my Adam
Alas, he is not there.
So I wrap myself in the sun
And with the moon
cover what lies above my legs
A Recurring Scene
Who is this?
What is the name of this bloody, arrogant creature?
No languages suffice,
And nothing is equal to his barbarity.
None can comprehend or describe what is happening:
A psychotic creature clutching his insane rifle
Pointing at a pregnant woman to retreat,
Her blood seeping through her gown,
He screams muffled through her scarf.
Her child appearing at a checkpoint.
After this
They ask: Why?
Where
No one has chiseled my rock
And awakened the pearl of my delta.
I am a moan from a lost flute
I am a wave that rushed to the beach
Because there is neither sailor, oar nor water.
And there is nowhere.
A woman on her way to prison,
is singing...
Another woman breaks an antique in the palace parlor
orders her servant
to take her out of her prison
for… a walk.
And
the street remains without a partition.
She crawls on all four
breaks a few ornaments.
Her mother carries her to her crib,
shouts: calm down, Tuqa!
But the next day she will crawl to break the porcelain plate.
A little while ago I came home to find
Tuqa had broken the candelabrum.
So I collected some of the pieces
And said to myself: How can I become a child who breaks china
and with his tears set alight the rooms?
_____________________________________
*Tuqa is the name of the poet’s daughter; tuqa is also Arabic for piety.
He remains seated in the prison hall.
Eyeing a secret key, he goes on,
curses the door and nightmare of trains that told him:
“Return” from the
ice of gas to the butter…
And he did.
Where have we returned? He asks the key.
The coffee is black and has lost its winter magic.
(On a snowy morning, he fiddles with his hardened boots
The lesson is “returning backwards.”
The students are from the ghetto.
The
priest leads their prayer to
Have we returned? To be met
by seas and lands where
I do not see bushes of honey?
Where the sun appears from the milk of prophets?
He returns… asks the door, whose panel is a palm,
and a fist is knocking on: Jailer!
He spills the coffee;
the black blood spreads.
A hand fumbles with the key…
If only I could return to the ice and my mother.
Goes on cursing the jail’s door
and the day they told him “return” to the butter, and he returned!
And the Aircraft Returns
the mint stretches in her tiny hand.
She does not like aircrafts or marching soldiers.
She has her braid;
on her lips her milky finger.
After sleeping she awakens
and the milk is still milk.
She knows the coming sirens.
Bodies trembled.
Breathless women murmured.
She has her father, her mother, faces of the building residence.
She ensures the silence of the well,
remembers her cotton teddy bear.
Disheartened or sleepily, she asks about it.
The silence is of a shelter.
They have come! He says,
as if they did not hear.
So her mother grabs her off of a black blanket,
embraces her,
bends like an arrow to let her into the cave of her lap,
with her arms shuts all the openings towards her.
They’re closer! he says, as if they did not hear.
They’re closer.
After dropping her hellfire, she departs
…the land a mire of burned flesh.
The little bear is torn apart.
She does not wake up to see it, look after it, or…
She goes away.
She returns.
Who I wonder will break this aquamarine in my navel?
Sir, give me all the fire you have.
Burn me.
Make
the burning coal succulent.
Take me from my oblivious toe to the hair on my head,
that believes ferocity, like hell
fills me with the lust of ginger.
I uproot the grass
by the tongue and hand,
by the breathless, oppressive, flaming fingernail,
by the blood gushing like a revengeful sword…
Without these fires, I perish in the armpit of my ice.
Have a pity on my body,
that you may pour on it from clouds of incense that ignites the breast, the back and the shoulders,
and the dates treasure that palm trees desire
Tear the dress apart,
for I have worn my clothes, my skin that inhabited the ice of longing for a thousand years.
If you tear me with the canine of your jaws
you will endow me the thrill of amazement at the moment of revelation,
or the peak of the impossible.
Take my breasts, my belly and my thighs.
I am the probable, mysterious fox that does not sleep,
seeing its trap in the bunches of raisin
and heads for them, perhaps to cheat them, despite the iron’s edge.
There is nothing wrong with honey,
even if it flows from the falcon’s claw at the sunset of cooing.
I am the charm of the apple of light in the darkness of the flute,
the secret of the one who waited for her lightening to tear out of the silken bed
the horse.
I am she in whom waste has cracked.
Take me back to your subduing river.
Rescue me with your fire.
I love destruction.
And take me without return to the serpents
to drink me drop by drop by drop,
whence I do not encounter the evidence.
I am the market porter, napping in the horses’ quarters.
I am the onlooker, the deaf, the dumb devil, the submissive country.
I am the flesh of the whip, the tears of death,
the brittle mirror of sorrows in people’s chests.
I am satan, the sweeper, Sunday mass, the water carrier of the mosque.
I am the shoe polisher, the headdress tailor by nature, the descender and the ascender.
The neighborhood barber, the hunter of bewilderment, the arch builder. I am the baker, the artist, the poison cook, and the wide gate of dreams. And I am the dreamer and the spiteful, the absent from the bell toll.
I am the naďve and the aroused, the sensitive papermaker. I am the ignorant of the intentions of the writer and the pen. I am the secret of yearning in the lost man’s night.
I am the blunt knife or the misfortune.
I am the rosemary of the pious or the shelling of the nefarious youth.
I am the street priest, the transgression of the swaying man.
I am the owner of the resting sand of streets, the observer and listener, full moon of diamonds and dust of the goblet chalice, and kohl of chastity and weddings. I am the rebounding echo and the springing rock, and sky of the seven clouds.
My magnificent master and the twinkling star remember me,
to remain the impenetrable dam and barricade.
I remain the subjugated and the subjugator, and the guards. I remain the follower and adherent, the farmer and workman. I remain the blacksmith.
Till God’s will be done, and the hungry come out of the hungry, to give him humiliation and the silence of the axe, and ice of the gaze and breath,
and the shining, warned eyelashes.
Thirty cigarettes after fifty
You light day or night.
Time no longer has meaning.
Smoke fills the space of your house
From the keyhole to the closet,
And the wooden hanger burdened by our clothes
Anointed by cigarettes
By the beginning of night or day.
Time no longer has meaning.
Smoke envelopes the table before the food
Coats the spoons and dishes after the food
Fills the basin wraps the entrances and balcony.
The smoke remains until the girls are incensed:
Father, we’re choked!
In the streets, in the house, in the classroom, in the market-place, in the bedroom, in our noses, in our eyes smoke.
The streets of these mirrors are covered by the night of this smoke.
We feel smoke will come out from underneath our feet and braids if we walk.
Smoke is humming in the head
Flowers from the windowsill puff out smoke at us
A broadcaster’s voice totters along a frequency of ashes
Another’s face takes the shape of colored smoke
She opens some pages and the letters are of smoke
While asleep, a genie rises from the smoke of nightmares.
A tremor stings you.
You light the winter fireplace into a flaming ablaze
You open your eyes
To find the young ones asleep.
There is no smoke.
There is no smoke.