Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (5 page)

In the songs we sing

Is a reed pipe,

In the reed pipe which lives in us

Is fire,

And in the fire we kindle

Is a green phoenix,

And in the phoenix’s dirge I do not know

My ashes from your dust

A cloud of lilac is enough

To hide

The hunter’s tent from us. So walk

On the water, like the Lord – she said to me:

There is no desert in the memory I have of you

And no enemies from now on for the rose

That bursts forth from the ruins of your house!

*

There was water like a ring around

The high mountain. Tiberias was

A back yard of the first garden,

And I said: The image of the world

Is completed in a pair of green eyes

She said: My prince and my prisoner

Put my wines in your jars

*

The two strangers who burned in us

Are those

Who wanted to kill us a short while ago

And are those

Who are returning to their swords after a short while

And are those

Who say to us: Who are you two?

We are shadows of what we were here, two names

for the wheat which sprouts in the bread of battles

*

I do not want to retreat now, as

The Crusaders retreated from me, I am

All this silence between the two sides: the gods

On one side,

And those who created their names

On the other side,

I am the shadow which walks on water

I am the witness and the spectacle

The worshipper and the temple

In the land of my siege and your siege

*

Be my love between two wars on the looking glass –

She said – I do not want to retreat now to

My father’s fort… Take me to your vineyard and unite me

With your mother, perfume me with basil-water, sprinkle me

On the silver vessels, comb me, and bring me into

The prison of your name, kill me with love,

Marry me, and marry me to the traditions of farming,

Train me to play the reed pipe, and burn me so that I may be born,

Like the phoenix, from my fire and your fire!

*

There was something like the phoenix

Weeping blood,

Before it fell in the water,

Near to the hunter’s tent…

What is the point of my waiting or your waiting?

The Stars had no role,

But to

Teach me to read:

I have a language in the sky

And on earth I have a language

Who am I? Who am I?

I do not want the answer here

Perhaps a star has fallen on its picture

Perhaps the top of the chestnut has taken me up

Towards the galaxy by night,

And said: Here you shall stay!

*

The poem is far above, and is able

To teach me what it wants

How to open the window

And manage my domestic affairs

Among the legends. It is able

To marry me itself… for a time

*

My father is downstairs, carrying an olive tree

A thousand years old,

Neither Eastern

Nor Western.

Sometimes he rests from the conquerors.

And is affectionate towards me

And gathers the iris for me

*

The poem is far from me,

And enters the port of sailors who love wine

And who never return twice to a woman,

And who have no longing for anything

And no worries!

*

I have not yet died of love

But a mother who sees the glances of her son

In the carnation and fears the damage of the vase,

Then weeps to avert an accident

Before the accident has happened

Then weeps to bring me back from the road of the traps

Alive, to live here

*

The poem is betwixt and between, and is able

To illuminate nights with a girl’s breasts,

And it is able to illuminate with an apple two bodies,

And it is able to bring back,

With the cry of a gardenia, a homeland!

*

The poem is in front of me, and is able

To set in motion the matters of legend,

By hand, but I,

Since I found the poem, have exiled myself

And have asked it:

Who am I

Who am I?

An echo returns. A wide street in the echo

Steps interspersed with the sound of coughing,

They are nearing the door, gradually, then moving away

From the door. There are people who are visiting us

Tomorrow, Thursday is for visits. There is our shadow

In the passageway, and our sun in the baskets

Of fruit. There is a mother scolding our jailers:

Why have you poured our coffee on the grass.

You wretch? And there is the salt-scent of sea,

There is a sea that breathes salt. My cell

Has widened by a centimetre for the sound of the pigeon: Fly

To Aleppo, pigeon, fly with my rumiyya

Bearing my greetings to my cousin!

An echo

Of the echo. The echo has a metal ladder, transparency, moisture

That fills with those who go up it to their dawn… and those

Who come down to their graves through the holes in space…

Take me with you to my language! I said:

What benefits people is what dwells on the words of the poem,

While drums float like foam on their skins

And my cell has widened, in the echo, to became a balcony

Like the dress of the girl who accompanied me in vain

To the balconies of the train, and who said: My father

Does not like you. My mother likes you. So beware of Sodom tomorrow

And do not expect me, Thursday morning, I do not

Like the density when it conceals me in its prison

The movements of meaning and leave me a body

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!

…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…

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!

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…