TOC


 

XIX
XXII
XXXVIII
XLIII
XLVIII

 

Forest of Symbols
Throne
That Palm Tree
IV
V

 

X
XI
XII
XL
XLII

 

XLVII
XLIX
Light
Wine
Guest

 

Sighs
Skyline
Clouds
Kufa
Truth

 

Vision
A field
Ink
Lanthorns
Dice Throw

 

Melancholy
Light
Affectations
Lung
Ecstasy

 

Landscape
Chest
Sun
Omniscience
Mirror
Proposal

XIX

 

Your love is a shade

My love is a sun:

The promise of coming together,

Or the promise of splitting?

 

XXII

 

Coming to this land

Is an ode

Not a litany.

 

XXXVIII

 

Look back: the past

Is but a cosmic hole

From which only spectres of steam

Come out.

 

XLIII

 

An expanse of copper

Cruising an expanse of rust ---

I never expected from the steps of nature

Such an error.

 

XLVIII

 

A rose in the orchard of his days

Liberates itself from its chains,

Its own fragrance being its chains.

What is it that its withering bud is telling him now?

And why is the question?

And who are you, oh inquisitor?

 

Forest of Symbols

 

My body is a forest of symbols

And my steps are as delineated by my apprehensions,

An ascending stair,

And variegations of revelation.

 

Throne

 

It is the throne polishing its own mirror -

An image of the sky,

And burnishing its own chair

With fractions of heads

And streaks of blood.

 

That Palm Tree

 

That palm tree attentively listens

When I relate to it

The memory of my parents,

And understands what I say.

 

IV

 

The huskiness of a voice, -

In it submerge the rhythm of meaning and submerge

  • yourself.
  • The neck of a woman, -

    Lay your head on its declivity,

    And dream against death.

     

    V

     

    The oceans have taught him the rhythm of the waves-

    The deserts have taught him the drawings and shapes of

  • Sands,

  • Neither have they sensed the mysteries of the oceans and

  • deserts nor his mysteries.

  • They have not noticed the difference in his pulse -

  • and they said:

  • His words,

    Like his days,

    Are repetitious, -

    A rose whose petals

    Wallowed in fragrance laughed.

     

    X

     

    That is a woman -

    Amidst her footsteps walks a Spectre.

    At times, it floats on her eyes

    As a notion, or as an interpretation.

    At other times, it dozes

    In an esoteric site.

     

    XI

     

    Poetry wanders through the body, It gets exhausted

    And takes a rest in the throat,

    Writers get speech while poets get torment

    And get its intoxicating bliss.

     

    XII

     

    Weeping willows:

    A notebook of grief

    To which the wind comes -

    it does not read it.

    A weeping wind

    Rolls in it, and turns its leaves.

     

    XL

     

    Along my guts the wheels of time

  • move forward and backward

  • Escorted with

    Mirrors, images,

    A multitude of languages,

    Blood, and wars.

    Furtively my limbs fight my limbs.

     

    XLII

     

    At times the wind comes, agitating and quivering -

  • my leaves remain still,

  • At other times, the wind does not come, yet

    My leaves keep falling.

    Go and tell the wind: my blowing is unwound off my leaves

  • and my fetter is loosened, -

  • My house is a mystery:

    The rain my door and the cloud my colonnade.

     

    XLVII

     

    Thy best luck

    Is that thou art the resonant lust and the declared sedition,

    That thou art the wandering vagabond through

  • the darkness of space
  • Thy best luck is that thou art the blast

  • that raids and uproots.
  • Thine is the initiation: thou devastatest or departest.

     

    XLIX

     

  • That is a phoenix rising,

    Naked

    It attains the dawn of its own prospects.

    And the attire that cloaked its body

    Was but a night that destroyed sparks

    In the waters of images.

  • Light

     

  • Light reveals not its own secrets.

    Its mystery melts

    In its own beams.

  • Wine

  • I shall say: love is the wine of the earth,

    The world is a vat,

    And the days are glasses.

  • Guest

  • Stormy on his way to our house,

    He is now our guest,

    Behold he is resting like a child

    In the arms of a rose.

  • Sighs

  • Those are the sighs of our ancestors,

    A rainstorm, A vague shower,

    And our steps are meadows.

  • Skyline

  • Skyline: a dumb manuscript,

    And murder is eloquent.

  • Clouds

  • Clouds over Kufa - these are

    The suspirations of the poor:

    The most lustrous raindrops, the purest water.

  • Kufa

  • Kufa's unknown blossoms in the words of its natives,

    But it fructifies only death.

  • Truth

  • Truth is a house

    In which nobody dwells.

    No neigbour. No visitor.

  • Vision

  • Close thy eyes so that thou mayst behold

    The face of reality in dreams that have long been defunct.

  • A field

  • A cloud settled over

    A mournful field,

    The field started reading its own poems to the birds.

  • Ink

  • O dawn,

    When wilt thou give me the ink in which is written

    My night?

  • Lanthorns

  • The ratiocination of the planets

    has not answered my queries;

    Their lanterns have.

  • Dice Throw

  • What the world calls reason

    I shall call

    A dice throw.

      

  • Melancholy

  • In the dome of mystery,

    The most splendid of the stars shining on

  • The earth
  • Is a star named melancholy.

     

    Light

     

    Ask the light.

    No, it will not say where it is going

    Or how it has come.

     

    Affectations

     

    He assumes the airs of the desires flowing forth

    From the obscurities of the body,

    He assumes the spirit of poetry - he reads what the winds

  • cannot see

  • And what foam does not utter.

     

    Lung

     

    A homeland not begotten by

    Or not brought up in the arms of a poem

    Is a congested lung.

     

    Ecstasy

     

    Light goes outside itself

    To encounter its spectra.

     

    Landscape

     

    A plot of land - herds of clouds

    With thunder as their shepherd.

     

    Chest

     

    Open my chest -

    In it you shall see

    A swan and sweet green water

    Wherein red roses swim.

     

    Sun

     

    Here in his wound is the sun,

    She is in his bedstead,

    Her eyelashes are married to his lamps.

     

    Omniscience

     

    Melancholy hath poetry

    That knows the thing-in- its-origin,

    Knows the thing in its manifestation and destination.

    Melancholy is knowledge.

     

    Mirror

     

    In a mirror of his own tears,

    He spies the suffering of the poor,

    In a mirror of the lexicon of his fancy,

    He spies the vanity of poets.

     

    Proposal

     

    Shall I try to attribute two lips to that rod,

    A wing to this pebble, and command

    The night of life to become brother to

  • the dawn of the poem? What?
  • Subversion of the alphabet -

    Coming in, going out,

    Rebelling, getting tyrannical, and becoming

  • defiant to words.