I Pick Up My Death and Leave

]. . .[
(2)
The lover carries in his exile
His death, his history and his address 30
And an internal torture in his blood
And an eternal real presence
]. . .[
And I destroyed my life
In all the exiles of the world
Looking for Lārā and Khuzāmā
I worshipped the fire 50
And practiced black magic in dead cities
Before history and before the flood
And I exchanged my mask with the mask of Satan.
Then, Lārā and Khuzāmā appeared to me in the music of poetry
In the letters S, H, and T 55
(6)
With my departure, everything departed.
The Blood of the Poet
(1)
The voice of the poet rises above the weeping of the bit players,
Lonely and biased against death and the miseries of the perishing
people.
With the fire of his dark happiness, he roams the world
and he is exiled to purify himself.
He is nameless and he has all the names. An eternal law
transforms him.
He kills this desolation with poetry. How evil it is to be
possessed by poetry. 5
“God, I am a bow between your hands, so break me,”
and I am the lover and the beloved
So, leave me. How evil this love is. It is nameless and
it has all the names.
Young, like the wind on the doors of the enchanted cities,
it comes and it does not come like the ashes of a fire
glowing in the burning or dying heart of the poet.
It is born complete or amputated, and it lives in the brutal
jungles of the self, like a child crawling in all the 10
directions of light, to spark the fire of innovation.
I am lost in this country 55
Lost between my impossible history
And my restored history
Carrying my nakba in my blood
Carrying my mistake and fall.
Will I ever remember my old voice 60
So that God will resurrect me from under these ashes?
Or will I disappear as you disappeared?
While Granada drowns in the sea!
The Death Dance
Drink to death!
And eat to death!
Because this feast is what the grave has prepared for the worms
Of our flesh and blood for tomorrow
And for life! Look at the shadows and say: “In vain!” 5
We have never been but a shadow ascending a wall!
Then it walked slowly until there was no time left so
it was terrified!
And it vanished
We, sir, have never been before
Never never! 10
Where does all this death come from?
Which blind sin corrupted the city
So it deserved to be punished with absolute darkness?
It lives in it while the sun shines
It is wedded to him and it gives birth to a deformed offspring 15
A face and no eyes
A mouth and no lips
Chatter and no language
And poetry without meaning or rhythm
The Tyrants
And the tyrants
The invaders
The governors 50
The tax collectors
These mythological creatures
The snakes
The coup leaders
The election falsifiers 55
The monsters who dyed their hair
And exiled themselves outside time so they do not die
Swinging between heaven and earth
Spying on us between our graveyards and houses
]. . .[
And we are the thirsty 75
And we are the naked hungry
Still standing here on the balconies of our minarets
And the roofs of our houses
Asking for help and raising our hands to pray
Listening to us from afar, they glance at us with contempt 80
And strike us with their stick.
The power is yours! 26
The power is yours!
]. . .[
The power is yours! yours! 38
]. . .[
“Do they hear but the echo of the curlew
A sound fluttering in the second part of night?”
The power is yours!
The power is Man’s! 55
The power is Man’s!
And here you are alone, O strong witness
Penetrating the absolute darkness 50
Naked, thin
Unable to bear what your shoulders carry
And never complaining to your cane
Of the vile stabs and the despicable grim faces
Yet, you bestow on the roads 55
What time and thought have aged of the blessings
of your blood
You use them to knock on our closed doors
So we wake up at five o’clock
Rise now, Egypt! If you are ever going to rise
The sun will be your carriage and time your horse 60
Or if you stay dead, tomorrow will never come
And the two planets will not shine
He dreams of white tulips, an olive branch, her breast in evening
blossom.
He dreams of a bird, he tells me, of lemon flowers.
He does not intellectualize about his dream. He understands
things as he
senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he tells me, is to drink my mother’s coffee,
to return 5
at nightfall.
And the land? I don’t know the land, he said.
I don’t feel it in my flesh and blood, as they say in the poems.
Suddenly I saw the land as one sees a grocery store, a street,
newspapers.
I asked him, but don’t you love the land? My love is a picnic,
he said, a glass 10
of wine, a love affair.
Did you feel sad? I asked.
Cutting me off, he said, Mahmoud, my friend, 45
sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.
Soldiers commit a sin when they feel sad.
I was there like a machine spitting hellfire and death,
turning space into a black bird.
He told me about his first love, and later, about distant streets, 50
about reactions to the war in the heroic radio and the press.
As he hid a cough in his handkerchief I asked him:
Shall we meet again?
Yes, but in a city far away.
When I filled his fourth glass, I asked jokingly: 55
Are you off? What about the homeland?
Give me a break, he replied.
I dream of white tulips, streets of song, a house of light.
I need a kind heart, not a bullet.
I need a bright day, not a mad, fascist moment of triumph. 60
I need a child to cherish a day of laughter, not a weapon of war.
I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting
And I refuse to die
I refuse to kill women and children
To protect the vines and wells 65
Of the oil and war factories wealthy owners
He said good-bye and went looking for white tulips,
a bird welcoming the dawn on an olive branch.
He understands things only as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he said, is to drink my mother’s coffee,
to return safely, 70
At nightfall.25