Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (6 page)

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!

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!

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 lot

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…

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.

As if you were self-made, O gypsy,

What did you do with our clay since that year?

*

You put on the place as you put on trousers of fire

Hastily. The earth has no role under your hand

Except to attend to travel’s gear: anklets

For water, a guitar for the air, and a reedpipe

So that India may become more distant, O gypsy, do not leave us as

The army leaves behind its distressing remains!

*

When, in the realms of the swallow, you descend on us

We open our doors to eternity, humbly. Your tents

Are a guitar for tramps. We rise and dance until the bloody

Sunset vanishes on your feet. Your tents

Are a guitar for the steeds of long ago raiders which return to the attack

To make the legends of the places

*

Whenever she moved a string her demon touched us. And we were transported

To another time. We broke our jugs, one

By one to keep time with her rhythm. We were neither good

Nor bad, as in fiction. She would

Move our destinies with her ten fingers,

Softly… softly strumming!

A cloud, the doves bore from our sleep

Will she come back tomorrow? No. They say: No,

The gypsy will not come back. The gypsy does not pass through a country

Twice. Who then will lead the steeds of this

Place to her race? Who will shine behind them

The silver of the places?

Two guitars

Exchanging a muwashah

And cutting

With the silk of their despair

The marble of our absence

From our door,

And setting the holm oak dancing

*

Two guitars…

*

A blue eternity carries us,

And two clouds descend

Into the sea near you,

Then two waves rear up

Over the stairs, licking at your steps

Above, and setting alight

The salt of shores in my blood

And fleeing

To the clouds of purple!

*

Two guitars…

*

The water weeps, and the pebbles, and the saffron

And the wind weeps:

‘Our tomorrow is no longer ours…’

The shadow weeps behind the hysteria of a horse

Touched by a string, and its range narrows

Between the knives and the abyss.

And so it chose a bow of vigour

*

Two guitars…

*

White songs for the brunette,

Time is shattered

So that her litter palanquin passes by two armies:

Egyptian and Hittite

And smoke rises

The coloured smoke of her adornment

Above the wreckage of the place…

*

Two guitars…

*

Nothing can take from you the Andalusia of time:

Nor the Samarqand of time

Except the steps of Nawahand:

That is a gazelle which has outstripped its own funeral

And flown upwind of the daisy

O love! O my sick illness

Enough, enough!

Do not forget your grave again

On my horse,

Two guitars will slay us, here

*

Two guitars…

Two guitars…

It is enough that you pass by words

For the phoenix to find its form in us,

And for the spirit born of its spirit to give birth to a body…

Spirit cannot do without a body

To fire with itself and for itself, cannot do without a body

To purge the soul of what it has hidden from eternity

So let’s take fire, for nothing, but that we become one!

Twenty-five women are her age. She was born

As she wished… and walks around her picture

As if she was something else in the water: Night

I lack… to rush in myself And I lack

A love to leap over the tower… She herself distant

From her shadow, so that lightning passes between them

As a stranger passes in his poem…

I have found my soul in my soul and outside

And you are between them a looking glass…

The earth visits you at times for adornment

And to rise to what causes dreams.

As for myself, I can be as

You left me yesterday, near to the water, divided

into sky and earth. Oh… where are they both?

If you go away, hang my dream

On the cupboard as a memento of yourself, or a memento

Of me. Another winter will come, and I see

Two doves on the chair, then I see

What you made with the coconut: from my language

Flowed the milk onto another mat

If you go, then take the winter season!

I am listening to my body: bees have gods

And neighing has rebec without number

I am the clouds, and you are the earth, which

The eternal wailing of desire supports against fence

I am listening to my body: Death has its fruits

And Life a life it renews

Only on a body… listening to a body

He loves you, come closer, as a cloud… come closer

To the stranger at the window, he sobs for me:

I love her. Descend like a star… descend

Unto the traveller so that he continue to travel:

I love you. Spread out like mist… spread out

In the lover’s red rose, and get muddled up

Like the tent: get muddled up in the King’s seclusion…

I am passing by your name, where I am in seclusion

As a Damascene passes Andalusia

Here the lemon lights up for you the salt of my blood

And here a wind fell off the horse

I am passing by your name, no army restrains me

And no country. As if I were the last of the guard

Or a poet wander in his fears…