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Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) A Mirror For Khalida A Grave For New York The State of A Veil The Face of The Sea This is My Name Ishmael A MIRROR FOR KHALIDA 1- The Wave Khalida a sorrow around which branches leaf. Khalida a voyage which submerges the day in the waters of the eyes, a wave which has taught me that the light of stars, that the face of clouds and the moaning of dust are all one flower. 2- Under the Water We slept in a garment woven out of the cherries of night. The night was specks of dust, and the bowels the rejoicing of blood, the rhythm of castanets and the rays of suns submerged under the water. And pregnant was the night. 3- Being Lost Once, I got lost in your hands, my lip a fortress enamoured with siege, yearning for a wild conquest. And you advanced. Your waist was a sultan, your hands the spearhead of the army, your eyes a hiding place and a friend.
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Page 1: Adonis- Translated Poems.

Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said)

A Mirror For Khalida A Grave For New York The State of A Veil The Face of The Sea This is My Name Ishmael

A MIRROR FOR KHALIDA

1- The Wave

Khalidaa sorrow around which branches leaf.Khalidaa voyage which submerges the dayin the waters of the eyes,a wave which has taught methat the light of stars,that the face of clouds and the moaning of dustare all one flower.

2- Under the Water

We slept in a garmentwoven out of the cherries of night.The night was specks of dust,and the bowelsthe rejoicing of blood, the rhythm of castanetsand the rays of suns submerged under the water.And pregnant was the night.

3- Being Lost

Once, I got lost in your hands,my lip a fortress enamoured with siege,yearning for a wild conquest.And you advanced.Your waist was a sultan,your hands the spearhead of the army,your eyes a hiding place and a friend.We fused, lost ourselves together, entered the forest of flames-I draw the first step,and you open the road...

4- Tiredness

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The old tiredness around the housenow has its urns and its balcony.It slumbers in its huts, sinking into absence.How we worried about it in its wanderings;we ran circling round the house,asking each sheaf of grass,praying,crying when we glimpsed it:How, what, and where?Every wind has been, every bough has been,but you have not...

5- Death.

After these moments, the little time will come,and will come the repeated steps and roads.After these moments, the houses will age,and the bed will extinguishthe flames of its daysand die.And the pillows, too, will die.

A MIRROR FOR THE CORPSE OF AUTUMN

Have you seen a womanwho carries the corpse of autumn,mixing her face with the pavementand weaving from the strands of rainher dress,while peoplein the ashes of the pavementare dead embers?

A MIRROR FOR ABU AL-'ALA'

I recall that I visited your eyesin al-Ma'arra,and listened to your footsteps.I recall that the grave was walking,emulating your footsteps.And around your grave,your voice was slumbering like a quiverin the body of days or the body of wordson the bed of poetry.

Your parents were not there.Nor was al-Ma'arra.

A MIRROR FOR THE CLOUDS

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Wings;but they are made of wax .And the rain cascadingis no rain,but ships for tears.

A MIRROR FOR THE 20th CENTURY

child's face.A bookinscribed on the entrails of a crow.A monster drawing close,holding a flower.A rockbreathing in the lungs of a madman.This is,this is the twentieth century.

A MIRROR FOR THE ADORING BODY

Every daythe adoring body melts in the air,becomes a fragrance;it revolves, summoning every fragranceto come to its bed,enshroud its dreams,dissolve as incenseand as incense return.

Its first verses are a child's tormentlost in the whirlpool of bridges,knowing neither how to stayin the water, nor how to cross.

A MIRROR FOR THE WITNESS

When the spears came to rest in the dying gasp of Husain,and adorned themselves with the body of Husain,and the horses trampled every pore in the body of Husain,and plundered and despoiledwere the garments of Husain,

I saw every stone leaning tenderly over Husain,I saw every flower sleeping on the shoulder of Husain,I saw every riverwalking in the funeral of Husain.

THE MIRROR OF ORBITING

Page 4: Adonis- Translated Poems.

After the fire of orbiting,after the nectar of the wound and the dreamin the bed of the fruit harvest,the passion for transcendence shone forth.I climbed my yearning and its fire,then we travelledaway from an oozing island of scumthrough the carpet of the translucent universe.

And today I am an astral savour.I contemplate my image in a mirror and melt Timeinto a mirror of arresting lightfor my divining face,for the day as sharp as the heart,for the conquest,for the magic of infinities and dimensions.

A MIRROR FOR ORPHEUS

Your sorrowful lyre, Orpheus,cannot transform the leaven,knows not how to fashionfor the beloved,captive in the cage of the dead,a yearning bed of love, a tress and two arms.Whoever dies is dead, Orpheus,and Time galloping in your eyesstumbles;and in your handsthe lyre breaks.

I glimpse you now: aheadon the banks;

SELECTED AND TRANSLATEDby

KAMAL ABU-DEEB

A GRAVE FOR NEW YORK

1

So far,the Earth has been drawn as a pear -I mean a breast -But, nothing between a breast and a grave stoneexcept a trick of engineering:

NEW YORK

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A civilization with four legs; each direction is murderand a path to murder,and in the distancethe moaning of those drowning.

New YorkA woman - a statue of a woman,in one hand raising tatters named libertyby sheets of paper which we name history,and in another hand strangulatinga child named the Earth.

New York A body with the colour of asphalt. Around its waista damp belt; its face a closed window... I said: WaltWhitman will open it - I utter the original password -but no one hears it except a god no longer in his place. Theprisoners, the slaves, the destitute, the thieves and the sick flow from his larynx, and no opening, no path. And I said:Brooklyn Bridge! But it's the bridge linking Whitmanto Wall Street, the leaf of grass to the Dollar leaf...

New York-HarlemWho is the one approaching in a guillotine of silk?Who is the one departing in a grave as long as the Hudson?Explode, O, rites of tears; interlace, O, things of weariness. Blueness, yellowness, roses, jasmine;the light is sharpening its pins, and in the pricking the sun is born. O, wound, hidden between the thighand the thigh, have you blazed? Has the bird of deathvisited you, have you heard the last throes? A rope, andthe neck entwines the gloom,and in the blood the melancholy of the hour.

New York-Madison-Park Avenue-HarlemLaziness like work, work like laziness. The hearts arestuffed with sponge, the hands are blown with reeds.From the piles of dirt and the masks of Empire Staterises history, odours dangling sheet upon sheet:Not the sight is blind, but the head,not the words are bare, but the tongue.

New York- Wall Street-25th Street-Fifth StreetA Medusian ghost rises between the shoulder and the shoulder. A market for slaves of all races. People living like plants in glass gardens. Wretched, invisible creaturespenetrate the texture of space like dust - spiral victims.

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The sun is a funeral wakeand daylight a black drum.

2

Here,On the mouldy side of the rock of the world, nobody sees me except a black man on the pointof being murdered or a bird on the point of dying;I thought:A plant inhabiting a red vase was metamorphosingas I moved away from the threshold; and I readof mice in Beirut and elsewhere swaggeringin the silk of a white house, armed with paperand gnawing at people;of remnants of pigs in the orchard of the alphabettrampling over poetry.And I saw:Wherever I was-Pittsburgh (International Poetry Forum),Johns Hopkins (Washington), Harvard(Cambridge- Boston), Anne Arbor (Michigan-Detroit), Foreign Press Club, The Arab Clubat the United Nations (New York), Princeton,Temple (Philadelphia),

the Arab map a horse dragging its steps while Timedangled loose like a saddle towards the grave or towards the darkest shades, towards the dead fireor towards a dying fire, revealing the chemistry of the other dimension in Karkuk, al-Dhahran and the rest of such fortresses in Arab Afro-Asia. And here is the world ripening in our hands. Heh! We prepare the Third War and establish the first, second, third and fourth bureaux in order to make sure that:1- on that side, there is a jazz party,2- in this house, there is a person who owns nothingbut ink,3- in this tree, there is a bird singing;and in order to declare that:1- space is measurable by cages or walls,2- time is measurable by ropes or whips,3- the system that constructs the world begins by murderingthe brother,4- the moon and the sun are two coins glittering underthe throne of the sultan.And I sawArab names across the width of the Earth more tenderthan eyes, shining but as a lost star shines,a star who has no ancestors, and whose roots arein his footsteps....

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Here,On the mouldy side of the rock of the world I know, I confess.I remember a plant which I call life or my country, deathor my country- a wind that freezes like a cloak, a face thatmurders play, an eye that dismisses light; and I invent your contrary, O, my country,I descend into your Hell and scream:I extract a poisonous elixir for you and resurrect you.And I confess: New York, in my country the colonnade is yours and the bed, the chair and the head. And everything isup for sale: daylight and night, the Stone of Mecca and the waters of the Tigris. And I announce: Despite that, you pant- racing, in Palestine, in Hanoi, in the North and South, the East and West, against figures who have no history but fire.And I say: Ever since John the Baptist, each of us has carried his severed head on a platter, awaiting the second birth.

3

Crumble, O, statues of liberty, O, nails planted in breasts with a wisdom that emulates the wisdom of roses. The wind is once more blowing from the East, uprooting tentsand skyscrapers. And there are two wings inscribing:Another alphabet rises in the topographyof the West,and the sun is the daughter of a treein the orchard of Jerusalem.Thus I set my flames ablaze. I start anew, formulatingand defining:

New YorkA woman of straw, and the bed is swinging from void to voidand here is the ceiling rotting:each word is a sign of falling; each movement is an axe or a spade. And to the right and left are bodieswhich desire to alter love sight hearing smell touch and alter alteration itself- opening Time like a gate they breakand improvising the remaining hours

sex poetry ethics thirst utterance silenceand negating all locks. I said: I'll tempt Beirut,- Seek action. The Word is dead, others say.The Word has died because your tongues have given up the habit of speaking for the habit of mumbling.The Word? You wish to reveal its fires? Then, write. I say: Write.I do not say: Mumble. Nor do I say: Copy. Write - From theGulf to the Ocean I hear no tongue, I read no Word. I hearnoises. That is why I glimpse nobody hurling fires.The Word is the lightest of things; yet it carries all things.

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Action is a direction and a moment, but the Word is all directionsand all Time. The Word- the hand, the hand- the dream:I discover you, O, fire,you my capital,I discover you, O, poetry.

And I tempt Beirut. She wears me and I wear her. We wanderlike a ray asking: Who reads? Who sees? ThePhantoms are for Dayan, and the oil flows to its destination.God is truthful, and Mao has not been wrong: weapons are a veryimportant factor in war, but not decisive. Man, not weapons, is the decisive factor; there is no final victory or final defeat.I repeated these proverbs and aphorisms, as an Arab does, in Wall Street where rivers of gold of all coloursflow coming from the sources. Amongst them I sawArab rivers carrying millions of dismembered limbs as sacrifices and offerings to the Master Idol. And between each sacrifice and the next, sailors were cackling as they rolled outof the Chrysler Building returning to the sources.

Thus, I set my flames ablaze.We dwell in black fury that our lungs may fillwith the air of history.We rise in black eyes fenced like cemeteriesin order to defeat the eclipse.We travel in the black head in order to march abreastof the approaching sun.

4

New YorkO, woman crouching in the arch of the wind,a form farther than the atom,a dot trotting in the space of numbers,one thigh in the sky, another in the water,say where your star is. The battle is approaching between the grass and electronic brains. The whole of life is hung on a wall, and here is the bleeding . At the apex is a head joiningthe pole to the pole, in the middle is Asiaand at the bottom the feet of an invisible body.I know you, O, corpse swimming in the musk of poppies,I know you, O, game of the breast and the breast. I gaze at you and dream of snow, gaze at you and wait for autumn.Your snow carries the night; your night carries people as dying bats. Each wall in you is a cemetery, each day is a black diggercarrying a black loaf a black platter,

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and with them plotting the history ofthe White House:

A- There are dogs that interlock like cuffs. Cats whichbeget helmets and chains. And in the alleys which sneakon the backs of rats, white guards procreatelike mushrooms..

B -A woman ambles behind her dog; he is saddled like a horse and has the stride of a king; around himthe city crawls like an army of tears. And where childrenand old men covered by black skin pile, the innocenceof bullets grows like grass and terror strikes at thebreast of the city.

C-Harlem - Bedford Stuyvesant: Sands of people congeal into tower after tower. Faces weave the times. Refuse is feastsfor children, children are feasts for rats... in everlastingfestivities for another Trinity: the Tax Collector- the Policeman-the Judge- The authority of devouring, the sword of annihilation.

D -Harlem (Blacks detest Jews).Harlem (Blacks dislike Arabs when they remember the slave trade),Harlem - Broadway (People enter as molluscs in alembicsof alcohol and drugs).Broadway - Harlem, a fair of chains and cudgels, and policemenare the germ of Time. One bullet, ten pigeons. Eyes are boxes undulating with red snow and Time is a limping crutch. To tiredness, O, olden negro, O, infant negro. To tiredness again and again.

5

HarlemI have not come from outside: I know your rancour, knowits tasty bread. Famine has nothing but the sudden thunder, prisons have nothing but the thunderbolt of violence. I glimpse your fireprogressing under the asphalt in hose pipes and masks,in piles of refuse which the throne of the cold air embracesin outcast footsteps wearingthe history of the wind as shoes.

HarlemTime is in the throes of death and you are the hour:I hear tears roaring like volcanoes.

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I glimpse mouths gobbling people as they gobble bread.You are the eraser to erase the face of New York.You are the tempest to grip it like a leaf and hurl it.New York IBM + SUBWAY coming from mud and crime travelling to mud and crime.New York = A hole in the Earth's crust out of which madness gushes river after river.

HarlemNew York is in the throes of death and you are the hour.

6

Between Harlem and Lincoln Center,I moved along, a number lost in a desert covered by the teeth of a black dawn. There was no snow, there was no wind. I was like someone following a ghost (the face is no facebut a wound or tears; the figure is no figure but a dry rose)a ghost - (Is it a woman? A man? A woman-man? ) carrying bowsin its chest and lurking in ambush for space. A deerpassed by and he called it the Earth. A bird appeared and hecalled it the moon. And I learnt that he was running in orderto witness the resurrection of the Red Indian...in Palestineand its sisters,space was a ribbon of bullets,and the Earth a murdered screen.And I felt I was an atom rippling in a massrippling towards the horizon, horizon, horizon.And I descended into valleys elongating and running parallel.And it occurred to me to doubt the roundness of the Earth...And in the house was Yara,Yara is the end of a second Earth and Ninaris another end.I placed New York in brackets and walked in a parallel city.My feet were laden with streets, the sky was a lake in whichswam the fishes of the eye and the conjectures and the animals ofthe clouds. The Hudson was fluttering like a crow wearing the bodyof a nightingale. Dawn approached me, a child moaning andpointing to its wounds. I called the night, but it answered not.It carried its bed and surrendered to the pavement. Then I saw it covering itself with a wind than which nothing was moretender except the walls and the pillars... A scream, twoscreams, three... And New York started like a half frozenfrog leaping in a pool without water.

Lincoln,That is New York: leaning on the crutch of old ageand sauntering in the gardens of memory, while all things tend

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towards artificial flowers. And while I stare at you, amongstthe marble in Washington, and see your double in Harlem, Ithink: When will the time of your imminent revolution come?My voice rises: Liberate Lincoln from the whiteness of marble,from Nixon, from the guard-dogs and hunting dogs. let him readwith new eyes the leader of the Zenj, 'Ali b. Muhammad; Let himread the horizon read by Marx, Mao Tse - tung, and al-Niffari, that divine madman who made the Earth so slender and permitted it to dwell between the word and the allusion. And let him read what Ho Chi Minh desired to read, 'Urwa b. al-Ward:I divide my body into many bodies..., 'Urwa didn't knowBaghdad, and he might have refused to visit Damascus. He stayedwhere the desert was another shoulder bearing with him the burdenof death. He left for those fond of the future a portion of the sun soaking in the blood of a deer he used to call: " My darling! Hearranged with the horizon to be his last abode.

LincolnThat is New York: a mirror reflecting nothing but Washington.And this is Washington: a mirror reflecting two faces-Nixon and the weeping of the world. Enter into the danceof weeping; rise up there's still a place still a role... I adore the dance of weeping which becomes a dove that becomes a flood. The Earth is in need of a flood.

I said weeping but I meant wrath. I also meant the questions:How do I persuade al-Ma'arra to accept Abu al-'Ala; the plains of theEuphrates the Euphrates? How do I replace the helmetwith the ear of corn? (The daring to hurl other questions at the Prophet and The Book is imperative), I say as I glimpse a cloud adorning itself with a necklace of fire;I say as I behold people streaming like tears.

7

New YorkI squeeze you between the word and the word; I grab youroll you write you and erase you. Hot, cold and in between;wakeful, slumbering and in between. I crouch over you and sigh I lead you and teach you how to walk behind me. I crush you with my eyes, you, the one crushed by terror. I try to commandyour streets: Lie down between my thighs and I'll grant youanother space; and your things: Clean yourself and I'll giveyou new names.I could find no difference between a body with a headbearing branches which we call a tree, and a body witha head bearing thin threads which we call a person.I confuse a stone with a car; a pair of shoes in a shop window appears to be a policeman's helmet, and a loaf of bread a sheet of zinc.

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Yet, New York is not nonsense; it is a Word.But when I write: 'Damascus' I don't write a word but mimicnonsense. D.A.M.A.S.C.U.S. ...still a noise, I mean a rush ofwind. It once emerged out of ink never to return. And Time is standing guard at the threshold asking: When does it return, when does it enter?Thus are Beirut Cairo Baghdad, total nonsense like motes of the sun...One sun, two suns, three, a hundred.

(So- and -so wakes up, his eyes filled with tranquillitymixed with anxiety. He leaves his wives and childrenand goes out carrying his shotgun. One sun, two suns, three,one hundred...here he is like a string defeatedcurling under himself. He sits in a cafe. The cafe is crowded withstones and toys which we call men, with frogs vomiting wordsand covering the seats with filth. ) How can so - and -so rebel when his brain is filled with his blood, his blood is filledwith chains?I ask you, who say to me,I know no science, I specialize in the chemistry of the Arabs.

8

Mrs. Browning, a Greek in New York. Her house is a leaf in the book of the Mediterranean. Merein, Ni'matulla, Yves Bonnefoy.And I am a desultory figure saying unsayable things.Cairo was scattered among us like roses oblivious to all times.Alexandria mingled with the voices of Cavafy and Seferis.This is a Greek icon... She said, as Time stuck to herlips like a red perfume. Time was arching its back, and snow was leaning on its elbow, (midnight of April 6, 1971).

And in the morning I rose screamingjust before the hour of returning: New York! You mix children with snow and bake the cake of the age.Your voice is an oxide, a post - chemistry poison, and your nameis insomnia and suffocation. Central Park prepares feastsfor its victims, and under the trees lurk the ghosts ofcorpses and daggers. The wind has only the bare twigs and the traveller only the blocked roads.

And in the morning I rose screaming: Nixon, how many childrenhave you murdered today?- This is a trivial matter, (Calley)- It's true that this is a problem. But isn't it also truethat this reduces the number of the enemy? (An Americangeneral).

How do I give New York's heart another size?Does the heart also extend its boundaries?

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New York - General Motors - Death.We shall replace men by fire! (McNamara) - They dry the seain which the revolutionaries swim and Where they turn theland into desert, they call that peace! (Tacitus).And I rose before dawn and roused Whitman.

9

Walt WhitmanI glimpse letters to you fluttering in the streets of Manhattan.Each letter is a wagon loaded with cats and dogs. To cats and dogs is the 21st century; and to people annihilation:This is the American Age !

WhitmanI didn't see you in Manhattan and I saw everything. The moonwas a husk hurled through the windows, and the sun an electricorange. And when a black road, a road withthe roundness of a moon leaning on its eyelashes, leapt out ofHarlem, behind the road a light splintered all over the asphaltand sank away like grass as it reached GreenwichVillage, that other Latin Quarter, I mean the word you getwhen you take the word hub and add a dot under the h **.(I recall that I wrote this in the Viceroy restaurant in London, when I had nothing but ink, and the night was growing like the down of birds.)

WhitmanThe clock announces the hour . (New York- women are pilesof refuse, and refuse is a time sliding towards ash ) .The clock announces the hour (New York- The system is Pavlov, and people are for experiments... where the war the war the war !).The clock announces the hour . (A letter coming from the East.A boy has written it with his arteries. I read it: The doll isno longer a dove. The doll is a field gun, a machine - gun,a shotgun... corpses in roads of light connectingHanoi with Jerusalem, and Jerusalem with the Nile.)

WhitmanThe clock announces the hour, and Isee what you saw not and know what you knew not.

I move in a vast expanse of canscrowding like yellow crabsin an ocean made up of millions of islands-persons; each is a column with twohands, two feet and a broken head. And you

O, criminal, exile, immigrant,nothing more now than a hat worn by birds which the skies of America do not know !

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Whitman, let it be our turn now. I forge a ladder out of my stares; weave my footsteps as a pillow, and we shall wait. Man does die but he is more lasting than the grave.Let it be our turn, now. I await the Volga to run betweenManhattan and Queens; I await the Hwang Ho to flowinto the mouth where the Hudson flows. Baffled?Didn't the Orantes use to flow into the Tiber? Let it beour turn, now. I hear tremors and shelling. Wall Street andHarlem meet - Paper meets with thunder, dust with gusts.Let it be our turn, now. Oysters are building their nests in thewaves of history. The tree knows its name, and there are holesin the skin of the world, a sun changes the mask and the ending and weeps in a black eye. Let it be our turn, now.We can spin faster than a wheel, split the atomand float in an electronic brain fading or glittering, empty or full, and find a homeland in the bird.Let it be our turn, now. There is a little, red book ascending, not the stage which decayed under the words, but that which has beenexpanding and growing, the stage of wise madnessand the rain which awakes in order to inherit the sun. Let itbe our turn, now. New York is a rock rolling over the foreheadof the world. Her voice is in your clothes and mine, her charcoaldyes your limbs and mine...I can see the end, but how do Iseduce Time to let me live to witness. Let it be our turn,now. And let Time float in the waters of this equation:New York + New York = The grave or anything emerging from the grave,New York - New York = The Sun.

10

At eighty I commence eighteen. I said this I say and repeat,but Beirut doesn't hear.A corpse is this, which identifies the complexion with thegarment.A corpse is this, which stretches as a book not as ink.A corpse is this, which doesn't live in the grammarand morphology of the body.A corpse is this, which reads the Earth as a stone not as a river.(Yes, I love proverbs and aphorisms, at times:If you are not infatuated, you are a corpse) .

I say and repeat:My poetry is a tree, and between the branch and the branch,the leaf and the leaf, there is nothing but the motherhoodof the trunk.I say and repeat:

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Poetry is the rose of the wind. Not the wind, but the windward,not the orbiting but the orbit.Thus I abrogate the RULE, and establish a rule for each moment.

Thus I approach but don't exit. Exit never to return. And move towards September and the waves.Thus I carry Cuba on my shoulders and ask in New York: Whenwill Castro arrive? And between Cairo and Damascus I wait on the road leading to......Guevara encountered freedom.They sank together into the bed of Time and slumbered.When he woke up he found her not.He abandoned sleepand entered the dream,in Berkeley, in Beirut and the rest of the cells,where everything prepares itself to become everything else.

Thus,between a face tending towards marijuana,carried by the screen of night,and a face tending towards IBM, carried by a cold sun,I sent the Lebanon flowing, a river of wrath.On one bank rose Jubran,and Adonis on the other.And I exited from New York as I exit from a bed:The woman was an extinguished star and the bedwas breaking into trees without a space,into a limping air,into a cross with no memory of thorns.

And now,in the carriage of the first water, the carriage of the images which wound Aristotle and Descartes I am strewnbetween Ashrafiyya and Ras Beirut, between Zahrat al-Ihsanand the Hayek and Kamal Press, where writing turns into a palm tree and the palm tree into a dove.Where the Thousand and One Nights procreate,while Buthaina and Laila vanish.Where Jamil travels between the stone and the stoneand nobody has the fortune to find Qais.

But,peace to the rose of darkness and sandpeace to Beirut.

SELECTED AND TRANSLATEDby

KAMAL ABU-DEEB

THE STATE OF A VEIL

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When the sun opens its bedchamberfor the evening,the sea gulls appear woven as a veilover the face of the sky.

THE STATE OF OLD AGE

Whenever I say:I have aged,and the wounds have worn me out,a tempest shakes me,and the morningattires mein its youthful countenance.

A SONG TO THE WOUND

Ahmad, Maryam, Karim-Death has landed in their courtyard,hunting their dreams,hunting the last things born in the waters of their dreams.But I, the narrator,will relate to you what I have seenon the other bank:Every day they sing to the sunto alight from its saddleand come to repose in their shade.The sun has fallen in lovewith the arches of their eyelids,fallen in love with their kuhl***,with the colour of their henna.And I see the sun-It gathers all its grapes and pours them into their wine barrels,drop after drop .And I say - I, the narrator:Time weaves its steps from their dismembered bodies,and paves their dismembered bodies as paths for their steps.It is playfulness- a child, the dice of the winds.And for them is that which impregnatesthe trunk of the eveningwith the sap of dawn.And for them are these fields;for them all this impregnation.

A SONG TO A PEASANT

A helmet?Your claim is a lie.

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This is the last of the orangeswhich used to inhabit his grove.

THE BEGINNING OF NAMING

We named the olive trees 'Ali,the street an opening to the sun,the wind a passport,and the road a bird.

TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE LOVER

1-

Her name was walking silently in the forests of letters.The letters were arches and velvet-like animals,an army fighting with tears and wings.The air was kneeling down and the sky stretched out like hands.Suddenly,a strange plant leafed and the brook standing behind the forests drew closer.I saw fruits embracing like links of a chain;flowers began to dance,forgetting their feet and fibres,shielding themselves with shrouds.The arms, the muscles, the faces were the remains of a feast for a day which had ailed and died,and for guests whose names had not yet been born...

(I saw a procession of white horses mounting the sky, so I ran shouting: A snake is chasing me. And I repeated, screaming: A snake as long as a palm tree...

But the procession of horses didn't hear me and hurried away .I said: I'll take a horse and escape.I implored, but only to realize that I had no voice.I tied my waist with the wind of trepidation and splintered in the air.

A sheikh with a pleasant fragrance appeared in my way.- Can you protect me from this snake?- I am weak ; it is stronger than I am. Along the way there is somebody who will protect you. Hurry .I hurried until I reached the air .The sky stared at me appearing and disappearing in the darkness,the wind pronounced me and repeated me.I heard the shiekh's voice from afar:Ahead of you is a mountain full of the gifts of life. There you have a gift that will support you and protect you.And I heard a voice rising out of the mountain:Lift your veils and behold.

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I turned and found the mountain full of windows;the windows were mothers and children.In a state of shock, I looked . A baby girl was in tears, saying:This is my father, pointing to the snake ; the snake slithered away.A hand stretched towards me.It pulled me and took me into a place the age of which I didn't know.There was a bed waiting for me. At its end sat a ghost rising like a breast, wearing a buttock and a chest and whatever else.)

My body awakened and fell captive to the pores the eyeballs the navels and the second nature in which procreate various kinds of poppies and mandragora* and suchlike plants of masculinity and femininity.And my skin began to prepare itself for the fall of another planet into its folds.

- 2 -

In all directions you grow;you grow in the direction of the depths.You unfold for me like a spring,and like a tree you surrender.And Iwas entangled in the towers of dream,drawing around them my forms,inventing secrets with which to fill the holes of days.

Upon your limbs I carved the embers of my limbs . Upon my lips and fingers I wrote you,and I engraved you upon my forehead. I varied the lettering and the spelling,and multiplied the readings.

My sighs were clouds propping up the horizon,a garment which I wove for you to wear,dyed with the sun.The night was a light leading my bodyin your direction.

In the folds of your dress I hid,escorting you to school.

Our steps stole the bells of the threshold,and in we sneaked . In the classroom I sat to your left,and slept between your eyelids; but I saw you not.

In a journey that never reached us,you were.Your garments were the regions,

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and the seasons your road to me.

On tree trunks we read our name,with stones we rolled.The trees, like us, were voices,and the soil was a fruitunder our glow.

We walked in the company of a cloud,chatted to the houses,daylight walking behind us,draped in grass.Then towards Qasyun you roselike a cloud of incense,and in your smoke I staggered,intimate, obedient, imbued with your bashful flavour,

- 3 -

Liber, Libera, Phallus ...

A thread of dawn bitter on the eye wakes us.Tighten the knot of the eyelids.In our bodies light hoists its hills and banners,and flames ripple pillow after pillow.Tighten the knot of the eyelids.Daylight announces the night - Wake up.

I penetrate the ship of my body to reach you, I explore the tenebrous landscape on the map of sex,and I advance.I drape my corridors in signs and talismans ,then burn for them the incense of my jungle - like hallucinations,of tattoos and fire.I see myself as a wave and see you as a shore.Your back is half a continent, and under your breasts my four directions.

I branch out around you,and between you and me I fall, an eaglewith a thousand wings.I hear your delirious limbs,I hear the sigh of the waist and the greetings of the hips.

The moment overcomes me.I enter the desert of trepidation, calling your name,

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descending into the fathomless layersin the presence of the narrowest world.I witness tears and fire on a single plate,witness the city of marvels.And my states become intoxicated.Thus speaks the body the lord.

O, woman inscribed by the lover's pen,saunter wherever you desire amongst my limbs.Halt and speak.My body splits open,and my treasures cascade .

Dislodge my fixed stars,and lie beneath and over my clouds,in the depths of streams and on the peaks of mountains.

The days of the year assemble round me.I transform them into abodes and beds,and entereach abode and every bed.I gather the sun and the moon,and the hour of love rises.I immerse myself in a river which flowsout of youto another Earth.I hear wordsturning into gardens and stones, wave after wave,and flowers with divine thorns.Thus speaks the body the lord.

High high high.

Be my face which rises out of every face,a sun that rises not in the East,and sets not in the West.And do not awaken,nor fall asleep...

I ascend to youwhile descending to you,gathering the extremes of my anguish and its distant regions,attacking you with my heart,and telling the hissing temptations to take meto roam over each cell in your body.

You erect your bed,or make the earth your mattress .We plant the trees of the body,

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and take our voices as quilts,until it is time for revelation.

The body has been estranged,touched by the magic of transformation.The ache of the joints, the pulsing of the limbs,the architecture of the muscles,and the grandeur of action,protracting contracting expanding,the slopes of the body its rises planes expansesand meanderings,the land of the loins is bedecked with stars,and its halves with volcanoes of white embers,with waterfalls of wildness and desire.

Then we seek the shade of the pavilionof the pelvis,where the planet of sex spins.The metamorphosis is now complete:Your breasts are day and night. Thus speaks the body the lord.

- 4 -

Liber, Libera, Phallus ..

Love is upon the sea, the sea upon the back of the wind.And the entire worldis a letter in the book of the body.

- What have you seen?- A knight saying: Never have you desired anything without it being. I took grains of wheat and sowed them. I said unto them: Grow,and they grew. I said unto them: Be harvested, and they were harvested. I said unto them: Be husked, and they were husked . I said unto them: Be ground, and they were ground. And I said unto them: Be baked, and baked they were. When I saw that I never desire anything without it being, I was filled with awe and awoke . I found you on my pillow.And you, what have you seen ?- A wind full of comets of fire; behind the comets were children driving them.- What else?- A hill moving and splitting open to let a pregnant deer emerge.- What else have you seen ?- We were together in a boat; you were pregnant. While we embraced tenderly, the boat capsized and broke up . We escaped over one of its boards; and on the board you had your child.And you implored: I am thirsty. I said: From where when we are in this state? I raised my eyes to the sky ; there was a ghost extending a jug to me ; I grabbed it, gave you a drink and drank; the water was more luscious than honey. Then I saw the ghost

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vanish, saying: I left my love to his loveand he gave me a home in the air.

Ambitious like the horizon is my body,and palm trees are my limbs.You fruit in me,and under your breasts I am harvested.I wither, and you are my basil and water.Each fruit is a wound and a path to you.I cross you and you are my abode.I dwell in you and you are my waves.A sea is your body, and each wave is a sail.A spring is your body,and each fold is a dove singing my name.You squeeze my limbs into your body.In your body I move in waves of intoxication,

I am gripped by fear, yet I dare.To the forests I plead for help,to the wilderness,to the primordial clay,

I get torn and splinter, descending into the deepest regions of your body,filled by beings which blaze die out inhale and exhale.An abyss of your body snatches me.

I ascend,gathering my heart which is scattered in my ends.I raise my eyes to you as you call me :You were so slow, my love, you were so slow.My body is a tent, and you its poles and ropes.You were so slow, my love,you were so slow.

A child beneath my garments shouts: O, Love, O, Love .The trees are his lanterns and the air his tower and bells.His passion flows in the feathers of the wind,soaring where there are no boundaries,in the direction of the sky the sky the sky.

Rememberour house standing alone in the fabric of fig and olive groves,the brook huddled around it, as small as the pupil of the eye?Remember?The woods fluttered like butterflies,and the night was the beginning of the Earth...?

The night...Deepen the vent of the breast, become the wildernessand cuddle me.

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Then I'll have a history of thunder,plains which wandering ploughs,an island of the ink pots of the body,I string its ends to my death,and dwell in the beginnings of the letters.

The night...Amongst the down of your body I pitch my tents.I quiver,prepare the provisions for the voyage,each quiver is a homeland,and the roads are luminous like my depths.We bend, tense, meet face to face,We parallel and interlace,(I a vestment for youand you a vestment for me).The muscles ferment,the skin acquires the colour of lilacand the taste of the sea,where the fathomless waves beckon and our limbs set sail.We hear the moaning of the mysterious depths,and glimpse our veins enshrouding themselves with death.We arch and stumble.O, the water the redeemer love,why the tiredness, why the repose? O, texture more tightly woven than water,O, love.

Weddings weddings.Not the sun illuminates us, but another magic.

Weddings weddingswhich open our faces onto the cities of magic,and open our frontiers to sex. The dream is a planetorbiting under our eyelashes.O, marvels of the other love in love.O, dimension which commencesbeyond all dimensions.

O, woman,as I created you, you desired me;as I wanted you, you flowed into me.You enter into my rhythm,you anoint your breasts with my words,and sink to the fathomless depth of love.Where I raise my city and live,

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we live, and from the depth of thingsfull of rancour, we proclaim love.

We dream that our eyelashes are inkpots,and daylight an open book.Farther than the dream we walked,farther than the heart we loved.We said to the one who names: Don't name us, and we awakened.You were a lake,and I a stem of mandragora filled by the Earth.Along your shores I moored,and your waist was my anchorage.

What tide awaits us?My breath is as closed as an oyster,and you are my pearls and my fisherman.Your face carries my sail,and between our love and the sky,the space is too narrow.I unveil the other face of daylight,and glimpse the other dimension of night. At the sea I scream: O, rampant sea,break like a reed,and at thunder: Listen.I ask: Is love alone a place which death does not reach?Can the mortal learn love?And what do I name you, O, death?

Between myself and me there is a distancewhere love lurks, casting its eye on me,where death lurks, casting its eye on me .And the body is my baptism.

Out of the depths of mortal being,I proclaim love.

Liber, Libera, Phallus ...

- How did you marry me? - I was wild, wandering,, with no peaceful place to repose.I fell asleep then roseto find a woman over my pillow.I remembered Eve and Adam's rib,and I knew you were my wife.

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That day I dreamt of clouds lifting, for me, like a veil;then a voice commanded me:'Choose whatever you desire.'I chose a black cloud,and watered you with its sap.And I said:' O, body, contract, unfold, appear and disappear.'And the body contracted, unfolded, appeared and disappeared. I saw my clothes slide off my body,and darkness descend over me;and the world emerged out of me,shouting as sharp as a bayonet:'Descend deep, deep into the darkness.'And I fell into the darkness.The stones were rays of light, the sands were flowing waters;and I found you,and saw myself.I said:'I shall stay in the darkness; I won't come out.'But the sun arrived and smuggled me.And I saw everything entering the sun...But how did you marry me?- My body was a wind blowing in your direction,wearing the colours of the Earth,and blowing in your direction.

- 5 -

Yesterday,I closed my door with the first star.I drew the lonely curtain and slept with her letters.And now the pillow is wet, and pregnant are the words.

I dream-I wash the Earth and make it a mirror,and around it I erect a wall of clouds, a fence of fire,and build a dome of tears mixed by my own hands.

- What have you prepared for me as a last present?- My shirt which covered us the day we were wedded,and I'll descend with you to the grave to alleviate your pain at the death of love.I'll mix you with my waterand offer you as a drink to death.

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I'll give you my kingdom:the grave and the freedom of death.

Once, I saw her as a rising sea.I adored the foam and vowed that the waves would be my neighbours, in their salt I would stroll with my worries, while they read to me their echoes.

(You see what lies beneath the skin. Do you, then, want to reveal the continent of the depths? Let somebody else discover the continent of the summits.)

THE DEPTHS

(We were a large crowd, men and women, walkingalong the women's road.Suddenly, a leopard crossed our path.I said to a man next to me: Isn't there a knight here to drive this leopard away?-I do not know, but I know a woman who will.- Where is she?He walked; I walked with him to a nearby howdah;and he called:Nada; alight and drive this leopard away.And she replied:Would your heart be at ease if he saw me,he being a male and I a female?Say unto him: ' Nada conveys her greetings and commands you to clear the way.'

The leopard bowed his head, and vanished.)

THE DEPTHS

O, friends, why do you desire my hasty death?Leave me. I hear bells in my memory,and hear in the bells another Earth.I need another Earth to add new words to my language.I needdeath.

Leave me.A shell invited me and read to me her verses.I also read pages of a book she was composing,which she called The Room of a Shell.As she read, she revealed her secrets:

I saw an elephant emerging from the horn of a snail.I saw camels and horses inside oystersthe size of butterflies.

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In front of my eyes a creature was born,half stone, half animal. She pointed to it and whispered:This is the woman.Then she said to me in a hushed voice:Put your ears between my leaves.And I heard the rhythm of the seasons,heard the music of a crumbling house,a house growing while crumbling.And when I announced my desire to leave,I heard voices chanting:Peace unto the shells-the spiral entrances.Peace unto the king of the mountains slumbering there.Peace unto his jingling hooks.

Close up.My body is a closed room,my body is a forest and dams and closed canals.Close up.Our bodies are angles and narrow covers.Our bodies are a lock and its key, and the path to usis the passion of the plants creeping in the narrow spacebetween our thighs and eyes,the passion which induces madness.

Close up. Our shells remain, even if broken, closed.Close up.Tighten the knot of the eyelids.The colour of our eyelashes -when we undress, wear our dreamsand hallucinate -is a closed map...

- 6 -

The sun of the lover dangles, its head bent by slumber.The unknown should take the vacation of the harvest .My face should journey in the spirit of the world.Do I tear up the Book of Exodus,incline over my image and read its sandcast in rings like a suit of armour?Do I whisper to my garments:Move on a crutch like a standing figure dreaming,hang as signs and banners,in the jungles of the fingers and the neck,where I get drunk and dazed like sunflowers.?Do I say to this chair:Follow me; remain faithful to the weariness

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which you have sipped shudder after shudder. ?Do I remind death of the leaves it forgotat my place on its last visit?

Between my shells and me rises an archof colours and distances,under which cities can pass and repose.My shells, too, have their trees and streets,their festivals and bed chambers .

If the Crab would speak, I would ask itwhere it would sleep tonight.If the sea would sleep,I would give it a bed in my abode.

1- A Voice

We leave our heads outside the covenant,granting each its drugs and ghosts.Your head is a pillow, mine an erupting volcano.

Then we inscribe the document:' A woman is a transient home for a manwho is himself a transient home.A man is the tomorrow of another man,and a woman the future of another woman.'Yet, we begin the following page,we converse with our legs,with the ink and words of the pores,and play in their masked corridors.

Suddenly, the roaring flames approach,and the thunderbolt beckons.We wake ; each runs after his head,in the yearning for dwelling and residing and in the waves of runningafter the other homeland,the lost, the everlasting...

2- Dialogue

Between you and me, there is a veil.You will never behold me.How do you hope for openness and revelation? Death has fallen into your heart, so seek the light of death.And how do you break the habit? You jumble and you stumble...My states have taken no roots in you.- I am your point of repose.

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My sun has baked you.I wear you as a ring with whichI put a stamp on Time.

3- A Song

The body of the poetis the body of the child and the crow.A body in a book,in the ashes of the curtains, in the door, in the stone staying up all night,between my eyes and the book.A body in the corners,in the mirage procreating under the mirrors.A body travelling farther and farther,a flying stone which receives or beats the sky.A body which opens in dreams,closes at night, stretches between the letters.A body like the letters.A body retreating in the forefront of the lines.A body like a suspended road, unfolding its leaves and questioning space,where the echo doesn't know its roles,where there is nothing on my approaching stageexcept the echo and the curtain...

4- A Song

I call you, O, end of the night,get intoxicated and extend,become a sorcererover my bed.I call you to say:What does love say to the loverat the end of the seasons?

5- A Song

Shahrayar is still in the peaceful bed, in the gentle room,in the mirrors of daylight,wakeful, guarding the tragedy.The light words have stolen his faceand taught him how to slumberin the blackness of the lake,in the blueness of the pebble,amidst his intimate ruins.

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Shahrayar is stillholding his sword,ready for the harvest,hugging the jar of the windand the urn of ashes.Shahrazad has forgottento illuminate the hidden pathsin the orbit of the veins.

She has forgotten to illuminate

the fissuresbetween the face of the victimand the footsteps of Shahrayar.

When the sun opens its bedchamberfor the evening,the sea gulls appear woven as a veilover the face of the sky.

THE STATE OF OLD AGE

Whenever I say:I have aged,and the wounds have worn me out,a tempest shakes me,and the morningattires mein its youthful countenance.

A SONG TO THE WOUND

Ahmad, Maryam, Karim-Death has landed in their courtyard,hunting their dreams,hunting the last things born in the waters of their dreams.But I, the narrator,will relate to you what I have seenon the other bank:Every day they sing to the sunto alight from its saddleand come to repose in their shade.The sun has fallen in lovewith the arches of their eyelids,fallen in love with their kuhl***,with the colour of their henna.And I see the sun-It gathers all its grapes and pours them into their wine barrels,

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drop after drop .And I say - I, the narrator:Time weaves its steps from their dismembered bodies,and paves their dismembered bodies as paths for their steps.It is playfulness- a child, the dice of the winds.And for them is that which impregnatesthe trunk of the eveningwith the sap of dawn.And for them are these fields;for them all this impregnation.

A SONG TO A PEASANT

A helmet?Your claim is a lie.This is the last of the orangeswhich used to inhabit his grove.

THE BEGINNING OF NAMING

We named the olive trees 'Ali,the street an opening to the sun,the wind a passport,and the road a bird.

TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE LOVER

1-

Her name was walking silently in the forests of letters.The letters were arches and velvet-like animals,an army fighting with tears and wings.The air was kneeling down and the sky stretched out like hands.Suddenly,a strange plant leafed and the brook standing behind the forests drew closer.I saw fruits embracing like links of a chain;flowers began to dance,forgetting their feet and fibres,shielding themselves with shrouds.The arms, the muscles, the faces were the remains of a feast for a day which had ailed and died,and for guests whose names had not yet been born...

(I saw a procession of white horses mounting the sky, so I ran shouting: A snake is chasing me. And I repeated, screaming: A snake as long as a palm tree...

But the procession of horses didn't hear me and hurried away .I said: I'll take a horse and escape.

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I implored, but only to realize that I had no voice.I tied my waist with the wind of trepidation and splintered in the air.

A sheikh with a pleasant fragrance appeared in my way.- Can you protect me from this snake?- I am weak ; it is stronger than I am. Along the way there is somebody who will protect you. Hurry .I hurried until I reached the air .The sky stared at me appearing and disappearing in the darkness,the wind pronounced me and repeated me.I heard the shiekh's voice from afar:Ahead of you is a mountain full of the gifts of life. There you have a gift that will support you and protect you.And I heard a voice rising out of the mountain:Lift your veils and behold.I turned and found the mountain full of windows;the windows were mothers and children.In a state of shock, I looked . A baby girl was in tears, saying:This is my father, pointing to the snake ; the snake slithered away.A hand stretched towards me.It pulled me and took me into a place the age of which I didn't know.There was a bed waiting for me. At its end sat a ghost rising like a breast, wearing a buttock and a chest and whatever else.)

My body awakened and fell captive to the pores the eyeballs the navels and the second nature in which procreate various kinds of poppies and mandragora* and suchlike plants of masculinity and femininity.And my skin began to prepare itself for the fall of another planet into its folds.

- 2 -

In all directions you grow;you grow in the direction of the depths.You unfold for me like a spring,and like a tree you surrender.And Iwas entangled in the towers of dream,drawing around them my forms,inventing secrets with which to fill the holes of days.

Upon your limbs I carved the embers of my limbs . Upon my lips and fingers I wrote you,and I engraved you upon my forehead. I varied the lettering and the spelling,and multiplied the readings.

My sighs were clouds propping up the horizon,a garment which I wove for you to wear,dyed with the sun.The night was a light

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leading my bodyin your direction.

In the folds of your dress I hid,escorting you to school.

Our steps stole the bells of the threshold,and in we sneaked . In the classroom I sat to your left,and slept between your eyelids; but I saw you not.

In a journey that never reached us,you were.Your garments were the regions,and the seasons your road to me.

On tree trunks we read our name,with stones we rolled.The trees, like us, were voices,and the soil was a fruitunder our glow.

We walked in the company of a cloud,chatted to the houses,daylight walking behind us,draped in grass.Then towards Qasyun you roselike a cloud of incense,and in your smoke I staggered,intimate, obedient, imbued with your bashful flavour,

- 3 -

Liber, Libera, Phallus ...

A thread of dawn bitter on the eye wakes us.Tighten the knot of the eyelids.In our bodies light hoists its hills and banners,and flames ripple pillow after pillow.Tighten the knot of the eyelids.Daylight announces the night - Wake up.

I penetrate the ship of my body to reach you, I explore the tenebrous landscape on the map of sex,and I advance.I drape my corridors in signs and talismans ,then burn for them the incense of my jungle - like hallucinations,of tattoos and fire.

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I see myself as a wave and see you as a shore.Your back is half a continent, and under your breasts my four directions.

I branch out around you,and between you and me I fall, an eaglewith a thousand wings.I hear your delirious limbs,I hear the sigh of the waist and the greetings of the hips.

The moment overcomes me.I enter the desert of trepidation, calling your name,descending into the fathomless layersin the presence of the narrowest world.I witness tears and fire on a single plate,witness the city of marvels.And my states become intoxicated.Thus speaks the body the lord.

O, woman inscribed by the lover's pen,saunter wherever you desire amongst my limbs.Halt and speak.My body splits open,and my treasures cascade .

Dislodge my fixed stars,and lie beneath and over my clouds,in the depths of streams and on the peaks of mountains.

The days of the year assemble round me.I transform them into abodes and beds,and entereach abode and every bed.I gather the sun and the moon,and the hour of love rises.I immerse myself in a river which flows

ADONIS

SELECTED AND TRANSLATEDbyKAMAL ABU-DEEB

THE TIME

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Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire:What blood is this that flows across the sand,what eclipse is this?Tell us, O, flame of the present, what shall we say?

The tatters of history fill my larynxand on my countenance the signsof the victim.How bitter language has now become,and how narrow the door of the alphabet.

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire:..../ A friend turned executioner? A neighbour said:How slow is Hulago? Who is knocking ?A ransom collector?Give him the dues..Shapes of women and men...walking images/We gesturedand exchanged whispers,our footsteps a string of murder/Does your murder beget your Godor your God beget your murder?- The riddle has confused him,so he bent,an arch of terror over his drooping days.

- I have lost a brother, my father has gone insane,and my children have died.Whose help do I invoke? Do I hug the door?Complain to a carpet?- He is dazed ; bring the urn and grant him recoverywith the snuff of the Ayatullahs.

Corpses which the murderer reads as anecdotes,heaps of bones.Is this mass a child's head, or a piece of charcoal?Is what I see a body or a skeleton of clay?I bow down, patch up two eyes, and stitch up a flank.Guessing may assist me and the light of memory may guide me.But in vain I read the tenuous thread,in vain I assemble a head, two legs, two arms, to discover the identity of the victim.

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-To whom does the ant offer its lesson?and why the amazement?Poetry is the fusion of this tragic spark with the eye; and a trance it isto see your house raised to God in fragments.The owl of a clairvoyant shrieks on top of a minaret,weaving its voice as a rainbow,and crying, throttled, to the point of joy.

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire...../ The fool reveals his secrets:This rebellious time is a jeweller's shop,and a mire of prophets.

The fool reveals his secrets:The truth will be death;death the bread of poetsand that which is called, or has become, the homelandis nothing but a time floating on the surface of Time.

The fool reveals his secrets:Where is your key, O, splendour of the flood?Please submerge me,and take the last of my shores, take me.I'm enthralled by fathomless seas ablaze,enthralled by a burning straw,by roads which startle all roads.

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire.My soul has forgotten the things of its passion,forgotten its legacy, preserved in the house of images.It no longer remembers what the rain pronounces,what the ink of trees inscribes;no longer paints anythingbut a sea gull flung by the waves onto the ropes of a ship;it no longer hears anythingbut iron screaming: Here is the city's breast,a moon is ruptured, tied to the umbilical cord of a ghoul of sparks;it no longer knows that God and the poetare two childrenslumbering on the cheek of a stone.My soul has forgotten the things of its passion.Therefore, the shadow -the looming tomorrow- terrorizes me;

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therefore doubts encompass me,and the dream resists me.Chained, I run from one fire to another.I have plunged under the sweat flowing out of my body,shared with the wallsthe night insomnia/(the steps of night are beasts...)And many a time I have said to poetry,lying heavy at the bottom of my memory:What is the saw that presses on my neck, dictating the Verse of silence ?To whom do I narrate my asheswhen I don't know how to tear the pulse and flick it over a table,when I refuse to make my sorrow a drum for the sky.Then, let me confess:My life has been no morethan a mill of the wind and a house of phantoms.

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of flames:The trees of love in Qassabin have brotheredthe trees of death in Beirut.And here is the forest of basil consolingthe forest of exile .As Qassabin enters the map of grass,and distils the entrails of the plains,Beirut enters the map of death/graves like orchards - the dismembered limbs are fields.What is it that spills Qassabin in Saida or in Sur,when it is Beirut that is spilling?What is it that in its distance draws so close?What is it that mixes in my mapall these bloods?

....Summer has withered; autumn has not arrived;spring is blackened in the memory of the earth/winter is as death paints it: bleeding or in the throes of death .A time emerges out of the flask of predestination and the palm of fate;a time of wandering which improvises Timeand ruminates the air.How, and from where do you hope to know this faceless murderer /who wears all faces...

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire:Exhausted, I turn now and gaze into the distance-

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What are these rags?Histories? Countries? Banners on the cliff of dusk?

Here, in the instant I read whole generations,and in the corpse I read a thousand corpses.Here, the fathomless waves of absurdity submerge me,my body breaks loose out of my control,my face is no longer in its mirrorsand my blood shies away from its arteries...Is it because I don't see the light which transports my dreams to it?Is it because I am a distant extremeof the universe which all others bless while against it I blaspheme ?What is it that uproots my depths and proceedsthrough jungles of desire, countries- oceans of tearsand dynasties of symbols,through races and nations- centuries and peoples?What is it that separates my self from my self?What is it that destroys me, negates me?Am I a crossroad?Is my path no longer my pathat the moment of revelation?Am I more than one person, my history my cliff of falling,and my rendezvous my fire?What is it that rises in the cacklerising out of my suffocating limbs?Am I more than one person, each asking the other:Who are you? And from where ?Are my limbs jungles of conflicts.....in a blood which is a wind and a body which is a leaf?

Is it madness? Who am I in this darkness?Teach me and guide me, O, madness.Who am I, my friends, the clairvoyant and oppressed?I wish I could break out of my skin.not knowing who I was or who I will be.I am searching for a name and something to name,while nothing can be named.A blind time, and a blinded history.A time of mud, and a history of wreckage.And the one who owns is owned / So, bless you, bless you,O, darkness.

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire:My Semitic grandfather is gripped by what blind fate begets.A parrot, or a prophet poured into a mummy?O, grandfather, whose path I now desert,

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alright; you are the one who dwells in the water germand the folds of the heavens;and it is wise of you to walk, as you do, proudly backwards;you are the secret and the kingdom stuffed with prophecies-and I am the one incapable of comprehending you.I am the one who strayed, and you are the miracle.O, grandfather, whom I now reject, and in whose creative name I had loved Creation,as of now, you will not recognize me; nothing will relate me to youexcept those ruins sedimenting in the depth of my soullamenting me, and making me lament you.

Hugging the ear of cornof Time,my head a tower of fire:The end of the age that rained sijjil**now meets the beginningof the age that rains oil.And the god of palms grovelsat the feet of a metallic god .And between the two gods I amthe spilt blood and retreating caravan,groping for my dying fireand trying to cope with my death, which rages rampantly across its desert.And I say:The universe is nothing but what my dreams weave..../The threads dissolve,and I see myself in the void of an abyss,plummeting into the night of descent.I see things as wheels of smokeand see the world as a hunter's game:The table has been laid, bodies are vegetables, the bowls are heads; God sits at the table of the hunt:a deerwhich had been a baker,a lizardwhich had been a soldier/Is it a god devouring the hunt,or is the hunt devouring the god?

Roads that lie, shores that betray;how can madness but strike you now?

Thus I desert the eater and the eatenand seek repose in every space of wandering.My consolation is that I delve deep into my dream,-straying afar, and rippling,

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singing the lust of rejection,hallucinating:" The orbit of Venus is an anklet for my days,and Capricorn a bracelet."And I say: "Flowers in their crowns are balconies..."My consolation is that I rebel beyond all bounds, and alert the verbs of rebellion.

Saddle these rampant winds.History is slain, and slaughtering is only the prelude.Leave the slaughterer, the slaughtering and the slaughtered as witnesses,and cover me with the remains of history, engrave meas a ruin amongst the ruins.

Thus, I distil wisdom from its purest source,shouting, welcome to my ruins, welcome to this eclipse.Tomorrow death will extinguish me, but extinguished I will not be.Tomorrow I 'll exit from one light to another .It is true that I am more frail than a thread,but I am more sublime than a god.

Thus I begin,hugging my land and the secrets of her passions.Her lover is the body of the sea, whose arms are the sun .A body - storehouse of thunderand anchor of tenderness.A body - a promise, and I am the one absent in it.I am the one rising out of this wager.A body /Cover the face of the lilies with the light of infatuated rain.

And let it be...I hug the age to come and walk,swaggering, as a ship's captain walks, designing my homeland.Go climb its highest peaks,descend its lowest gorges,you will find no fear or shackles.As though the birds were boughs,the Earth a child, myths were women.A dream?I grant to those who come after me the bliss of inaugurating this space.

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My skin isn't a hut of thoughts,nor is my passion a woodcutter of memories.My ancestry is that of rejection, my weddings are the impregnationbetween two poles.And this age is my age:The dead god, the blind machine.And my ageis that I inhabit the pool of desires,that my dismembered limbs are my flowers,that I amthe alif of water and the ya of fire,* and that I amthe madman of life.

Revealing to Time the secrets of his passions,thus he confesses:He is the one who goes astray,he is the one who leads astray,he is the dissenting, the outsider and the differing.

Adonis

SELECTED AND TRANSLATEDbyKAMAL ABU-DEEB

ISHMAEL

Wrapped in my blood I come,led by raging fires, guided by ruins.Crowds of people ripple as torrents of tongues:Each phrase is a king, each mouth is a tribe.....And I am the one disowned by every tribe. 1

I exited, embraced by woundsand embracing the murdered Earth,building my tents in my bloodand telling my name to gather my notebooksfrom the house of Ishmael 2

(Ishmael floats,a desert 3 of dying books; above hima moon donning its sabreand dragging along its camels...)

/...And I am the one disowned by every tribe. 4

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I search for the guiding sparks / 'The Daughters of the Coffin'*slumbering in the down of darkness / in their light I see my face a ladybird, see my deatha bird perching on the shoulder of the dark,and see the sand improvising speech.

On the east side of the Euphrates the storkscarry the keys of migration,having destroyed their nests.And on the West Side a temple rises /two breasts swelling with chaff.

/...And I am the one disowned by every tribe.

Here I am, ravished by my own hands / my blood at war with my blood;a body is torn inside a body,and love is no body; my death is no body. 5

Who are you ? 6 My wreckage yells at meand my words are on the verge of denying me.A fire comes to him from a land which floatsand slumbers under his pillow.-----------------------------

A fire comes to him from a land which floats on headsstuffed with tongues - creatures created by a god who dictatesblood as books, affirms what he wills for them, and abolishes what he wills .A fire comes to him from a land which floats,sparks come close to gripping him.How can he exit - how can he break the siege? 7 -----------------------------

I said farewell;I recall a figure crouching in the house of Ishmael 8 stringing a rock to a cloud,gashing the stars with stones,living amongst tortoiseswhich drifted into dreams and went to sleep.I said farewell/ I recall a howdahhallucinating 9 with my lady,and I recall a nationhallucinating with the last remains:

A headless beast, crowning itself a godthrowing its shadowa homeland like a jester's hat.

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(Its shadow 10 is a land which spreads its fieldsas beds, and is guided.....)

I said farewell.Eclipse engraved itself upon my forehead.I granted my accent to fragmented timeand granted its accent my certainty.

/ ......And the Earth 11 enters into metallic coughing /streets paved with children - offerings, 12 a nation vaunting its throne of bones . 13

-----------------------------

Go, roam around;thoughts like rotten fishes, a city of tongueschopped up and trampled over.Go, roam around,and ask the rootshow the body of the place draped itself in its beasts;or ask the crow of the alphabet- Ishmael's body,(Ishmael is the map of the ages).Go, roam around/ open a head here, open a thought there.-----------------------------

You will see an image of your face,unknown.You will see your garments on the body of another.Perhaps you will get ensnared by teethwhich speak the language of angels,or have the shape of the heavens.Go, roam around/You will see pigs transformed by The Book into gazelles.-----------------------------

...../ And we are afraid to feel the loaf.And what to say to a murderer who weaves blood into pillows ? 14

Who are you, Ishmael ? 15 Your footsteps bleedbooks which snake-charmers collect.

In each letter is a pit,in each comma a mirage .Nonsense and the divination of a fable.

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You've left me no place near you, a place where my ink can weave its garments,that the liberating flames may brother what I feel and say/You've split me in two,created a schism between my blood and me -Who are you, Ishmael? And how do I see you the moment I don't see you ?-----------------------------

But Ishmael is a wound, and I am the comrade of his suffering.My visions nurture him tenderly,and I am a letter written to him-a letter from an insider - an outsider.-----------------------------

/.... And the Earth enters into metallic coughing/Its prophet is Hayy ben Bayy 16 .

The nation has shrivelled and dissolvedin a stream of mud which flows and dissolvesin Hayy ben Bayy.

O, Sun, O, foot of daylight,you have deserted your night with us,and forgotten it...

- Who are you?- A man from Tamim.

" And if a flea on the back of a fleaattacks Tamim,their crowds will flee." 17

-No, I am not from Tamim.- Who are you? A Taghlibite?- No, I'm not a Taghlibite. 18

.../ And the Earth enters into metallic coughing/Its prophet is Hayy ben Bayy 19 .

Who are you, Ishmael? Our stage 20 continues its show.-" Exalting your glory on high."

The neck of the shell is a priestwho strings Time to his threads,and tailors a pair of trousers for each moment.-"Exalting your glory on high".

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Who are you, Ishmael?(It's said that the sunfor you is but a pitcher,and the Earth is but a plate...) Are you a magician's fortress,or a ghoul's head?-" Exalting your glory on high ". 21

The lung of the ages is rupturedand the Earth is a weaver's rag.

Wrapped in my blood I walk,led by raging flames, guided by wreckage.A festival with which annihilation favours its offsprings,a festival for Ishmael putting an end to Time. (Would he, I wonder, inaugurate Time?)A festival too grand for the place to accommodate .It is said Ishmael has come, and it is said he has disappeared,his guests have packed the place:sects and deities which feast together, eat one another,- and the words get jumbled.-----------------------------

- One crowd distributes roses,celebrating the erection of guillotines .-The Arab atlas is the skin of an ostrich which defeated another ostrich.- No victor but He / The saddle of His horse is gold,and a cloud is His forehead.-----------------------------

-Are you an Umayyad? 22 - No, not an Umayyad.

- Are you a Hashemite ? 23 - No, not a Hashemite.

A festival for Ishmael (Ishmael came and, it is said, he disappeared),his guests are sects and deities which feast togetherand eat one another- divinity mingles with bullets. Is this the salvation ? 24

I call you, Ishmael; the wine of our covenant has been servedand the feast of duskis in all its glory -You and I are the servers of wine, and around usthe insects of weapons besieging us and hatching their eggs...

I call you, Ishmael; I inaugurate the end: I am not your offspring. 25

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Before you, I gave my Paradise its Eve,and before you, I beheld the face of God .

I call you, Ishmael ; I end what you began-I give my feast in the hall of the ages.I uproot myself from you. (The last sea gull to read the shores is sitting by my side, and the first sea gull to write the shores is sitting by my side) .I inaugurate the beginning, creating playfulness like the face of God,swimming in the waters of the alphabet:in everything His secret flows;it's not for the like of Him to be enchanted by His roots,or to be delimited by an identity . 26

I learn the words anew, I master their secretsand say: My roots are play, and the boastful swagger of ecstasy-A revelation which inaugurates every light in fondness,and makes the earth its bed, as does a stream . 27 And I say: My ancestry is a passionwhich was enamoured with space, and forged its sails out of the body of the air .Dawn attires me in its bountiful joys,and each cloud is a homeland for my love . 28

I also say:My love learns the words anew,masters their magic,and shares with noble grapes their cunning . 29

The days of my love are trees impregnated by the seasons-its hands are dawn -not the dawn of Ishmael,but this blood poured out in the cup of words;not yesterday,but this wreckage:corpses, a brother and a brother,gardens of friends and lovers ;corpses- promises, the yearning of the absent, the longing of those living in waiting, and the passion of a dreamer;corpses- feasts, their wine is the sky, their savouries are books;corpses- impossible to tell the butchering sword,from the butchered neck, from...corpses-

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out of the vapor of their flux rise Suras* which proclaim:Murder is the beginning ; the murderer is jumbled with his victim;a house screams: I am a grave;a poet yells:My people are a space of blood;and space confuses space.

Wrapped in my blood, he walksled by raging fires, guided by ruins:I walk ahead of words towards their bedin order to see the lake of their death.

Dusk has said:I have erected the neck of ash 30 as a bridge to every prophecy .Dusk has said:Barren is the body of the city;I have impregnated it, revealed its sex to the liberating sap.Dusk has said:Had I had a home, I would have invited you and said to you: 'Here you can believe and disbelieve,blaspheme or mock or dream.'and would have had a wider space for your madness,would have been the most faithful friend.Dusk has said.

.../And I am the one disowned by every tribe . 31

That I may have the bliss of hearing the voice whispered by the larynx of dusk,I've granted my poppies to friendly fields,and my inkpots to the leaves of the seasons.I have granted my memory to each wrinklein that body which I have called a 'homeland',and which lives without a homeland.

And I've worn my poetry as a shroud. 32

I've given the tiles of snow my versesin order to grant them warmth.I've given the sheikh of the wind a crutchwhich my father inherited from his grandfather.I've given the eyelashes of the winds my windows.I have given every lover my passion and fire.I have given Hagar everything a son can give.I have given Ishmael the prettiest things my childhood knew,that I may have the bliss of hearing the voice which the larynx of dusk has whispered.

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Dusk; and Ishmael is entering dusk,the dictation of a desert,and your rolling headis its rhythm. 33

Dusk, and nature rejoices in dusk.My blood is an ode to dusk.

A willow spreads its tressesin order to cuddle dusk. Water deserts its course in order to witness dusk.In everything there is a rose leaningtenderly on the shoulder of dusk. 34

Dusk, and the sky collides with our steps.Here I am, shaking hands with a creatorwhose fingers have frozen, giving my languageto the ink of death,following this light ball of spiders' webs,and saying: ' My land is a dead lover and a dying lover."

Here; I shall paint on my handsthe luminous planet of dusk,in order to greet the withering rose I have picked from the balcony of Time which I have brothered,and in order to touch its virgin mud,which will return to the elements their magic,and say unto language: "Follow me.This is the beautiful dusk;its victim inherits its victim.This is the guiding dusk." 35

Wrapped in my blood I come,led by a dream, guided by sparkle of light.I have prepared my house for Ibn Rushd,for Abu Nuwas and al-Radiyy,and written to Ta'iy, asking him to come,and said to Abu'l-Quruh: Abu al-'Ala' has come,so have Ahmad and Ibn Khaldun.We shall proclaim the Verse* of the depths,the hissing of the primordial flux,and deconstruct the buried languagein the forest of things - shall read a rockwhich had remained obscure,shall hear what a jasmine whispers,and what flickers in the minds of the fields:

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Love is the rose of desireand poetry the fatiha* of minds. 36

.../And I am the one disowned by every tribe.

I call you, Ishmael, I complete what I initiated.I give my feast in the hall of the ages.Nothing remains of the body of place but dust /I hug it as clay,and as the stroke of a creator-playfulness which dissolves its balsam in my blood.

With the innocence of play I mingled.I saw a wing in a stone,saw my body a rose dictating the book of its nectar,and saw the universe as ink.

With the innocence of play I fused.The images of nature changed.I said unto playfulness:Devour my body, take me, old man of my passions,luminous sea. Give me a lap that shares with memy rampant lust . You have an image upon whose limbs my limbs are engraved, and you and I are wrapped in our covenant. 37

And I am fortified by my rampant passion,I am my dream ; I inscribe its mysteries as images which divulge their secrets to me.I am my body,and to the body are my supplications.The dream is the blossom of my feasts,the dream is my bread and celebrations.I see as though I were a piece of claymixed with dust other than its own.My body rejoins me to my body,and my question questions me.

I see as though I've brothered a fool,and driven to the water a herd of palms. 38 (If only Ishmael would liberate himself from himself . )

I have brothered a fool and roamed astray,accompanied the fern of ecstasy,dressed in weeping willows, and said:" Roses are a lover's tent."

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(If only Ishmael would liberate himself from himself . )

I've brothered a fool and was the bridgebetween one temptation and another.(If only Ishmael would liberate himself from himself . ) I've brothered a fool, let Creation dwell under my cloak,and announced out loud: " The truth should be an ascending pathbehind me."

I've brothered a fool in order to enter the time of eclipse,and embrace the last rose,that it may become the first of the things I say. 39

Whatever there was, there was.City dwellers and Bedouins- a dictionary of a legend.(The crow has tended to whiteness/ so - and - sohas written her childhood as an amulet for passion,and so - and - so has written its historyas an abode for Ishmael- a field of blood) /I say: I have given my age to dust,and entered the womb of eclipse,a phantom of an emerging history -I almost hear its steps .

O, image which is to be,my language and my love,if you are one, then in your name,in the name of your passionate yearning,I am I - and I am other.(As though Ishmael were tearing himself from himself . )

It is dusk.And nature rejoices in dusk.My blood is a chant for dusk.A sea ripples as it comes to me,its waves ablaze, repeating:This is the beautiful dusk- Its victim inherits its victim.

This is the guiding dusk.

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1- He walks alone;he walks ahead of his time.

2-Had Ishmael been a field, I would have poured my clouds over him,had he been a tempest, I would have been a horizon for his blasts, would have been his friend.

3-A desert, a necklace of sand; the caravans are its string.

4- In vain do you ask about your friend; he has died.The house that gave him refuge has died too / dig a road to meet him, in your lasting heart. But, do you think the heart lasts?

5- No water knows where my desert is, or how I taste it.

6- I hurl my questions, but find no answers.

7-The generous trees grant me their garmentsand a star extends its hands to me...

8- Ishmael's dreams are crouching, his forehead is earth/Ishmael was nothing but a voice tearing itself, a voice without a space.

9-Tihmaz Bey is still hallucinating with the murder of his brother and slaughtering anyone who disagrees.

10-And his shadow has secret watchdogs and guards.

11-A land of wreckage / a jungle of tribes and massacres,a land that crowns our ageas a king on the throne of fables,a land that heightens the awesomeness of the distancebetween our footsteps and our hell.

12- Slaughterers and executioners sharing the skins of their victims.

13- Qiriqmaz presented his wife with a bracelet made of a child's bones.

14- The act of a Sultan; are you a fool or an ignorant fellow to say: No?

15- Was Ishmael a caravan which would see its beautiful opposite and cull it as a brother?Did he use to raise his head as an arch for the procession of his heartand see the sky as a game for his imagination?Did the unknown truly guide him to its mysteries, and did love for the sake of love orbit in his name, reading its dreams in the rites?Was Ishmael no more than a conjecture, or was he a sin?

16- Hayy ben Bayy is a machine;nothing can translate its magic.

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17- Kujuk is sharpening his spears;he has destroyed the houses to erect his fortresses.

18-Kuzlar Agha said: The money of the regions belongs to the Prince.He took the women as spoils of war and bought his position for cash/Farhad is his young successor.

19- They brought the last survivors,brought their legs, and their noses: a fatwa * issued by Tuman...

20-A feast /Each skull drinks the wine of its love from the belly of a corpse.

21- Foam../ and Ishmael floatsa cemetery ruminating its dead and pouring its salivaas elegies.And the Earth enters into spasms of metallic coughing / its prophet is Hayy ben Bayy.

22 - Umayya's citadel has crumbled,and God feels no sorrow over its misfortunes.

23- O, house of Hashim, return to your palm trees,dates have now become so cheap.If you say: we are the clan of Muhammad,So are the Christians the clan of Jesus.

24- Have you been asking about the stars of my tribe?They've waned/ I like those who wane.I have come to believe: the wings of hens are angels,and the sun is the peel of an orange .I have come to believe: my kind is moss,and God is a machine.

25- I uproot myself from him. My family:a murderer of gods,a creator of ecstasy,and a liberator.

26- What? As though water were my memory / Do I inhabit the heart of a spring?

27-I gave myself my passion, and forgot myself.

28-I hid my sorrow in a wall, in our ruined house/ pampered by a sleepless star .My despair is a mask,my anger a startled gazelle nurtured by a child.

29- What does somebody in chains say,somebody whose book is erased by the prophetand his tongue erased by the Book.

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30-Ash has mixed its garments with the wind/ gone to sleep,its pillow a horizon and a sun.

31-You have resisted . Even the light has died/ Aren't you a pulse?In everything there is a dead pulse/ Do you rise? How do I grant my steps your path ?How do I begin? And where do I go?

32- Daylight sat exhausted at my table and wept / I rejoiced: it was crying with me.

33-The ink of the cave still prints its axe on the heart of my age . I don't belong to it. I'm its contrary:A digger of dreams- clouds which have been promised the lightning.

34-Wherever I go, I find pierced hearts, and see heads dangling...

35- The shoulder of daylight is wounded, the night limps/ our square is a grave.I'll gather a rose and add it to my letters.Beirut is a fugitive's camel, and death is its howdah /I saw crimes grazing, saw their lambs,and saw the dancing of metals.And I see now: the tents are the tents, the ruins are the ruins;roads wrapped with the blasts of their flux, fire understands my language.

36-A monkey is crouching on the stone of prophecy,gazing at me as though I were his saint.Do I say that Ishmael is my fire, Hagar is my abode, and Abraham my garment?What do I say to him?Do I claim that I am a god and declare my paradise:Eve is apples, Adam is lust,and death is the key of heavens?Do I say: I have a foot here, and a hand there,and have horses in the air?

37- A time which illuminates the image of the new Timea time- a creative passion, and the grandeur of a feast.

38-The palm trees have bows, but no arrows.

39-I'll say: Ishmael is a valley of stones;will say: Ishmael is clay that has cracked and splintered;will say: Ishmael is a craftsman's art,and Hagar has not migrated.             vc

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