Ghassan Zaqtan - 33 poems

A woman who enters his room when he dozes off
she stares at his heart
exactly there, his heart,
then takes a flower out of the vase
before he wakes to count the flowers missing one

Whenever he dozes off he finds himself roving
in endless arches
and roads in watercolor
affixed to the intimate scent of a woman's absence
as if he were strolling
in the memories of the missing flowers

Today
at five thirty AM
she stood behind the glass
and stared at his eyes

and he wasn't sleeping.

He thought of going back there
where he had left her listening
in a blue shirt and short sleeves

There was a man crossing the street without looking
whereas his infidelities were behind him stumbling like a heap
of obese women, whereas he was going down the three steps
careful not to bump into the pampered flower pot

He thought long of going back
where he had left her listening
with honey eyes and a cloven heart

A few boys were swinging intensely
from the peach tree he has no memory of
while he was trying, in vain, to discern the steps
and move the bougainvillea pot out of the way

When, suddenly, the bell rang
the ancient bell on the hill
the hill which, since that night, the bougainvillea has covered,
that night when the eleven brothers killed
their only sister.

What led him over there
in such cold weather?
Not longing or curiosity
but maybe fear or perhaps it was
the chill in the room
though everything appeared as it was
as he wrote in an old poem he could not finish

"…Everything is still as it was
since we had gone out to war,
since childhood or before,
perhaps the sun of those years made the white curtains grow
fainter and the pebbles
in the hallway became rounder
and shinier or the grass had grown longer
or dried up!

The three mirrors are as they were
the sheets the shelf
and the broom

the family photo
the leather-bound Quran
the rosary of the deceased grandmother

everything was as if nothing had changed.
Perhaps we
we who fell upon the war
from the school bell…"

That was in the summer of 1986 in Damascus, his mother was still alive then
and there was an opening somewhere in that poem, more like a hole that followed him,
he'd hear it stumble behind him wherever he went, especially when toward the anxious
endings in his dreams, and even there, they, the boys, would continue to stare at him
and send out their perplexing gestures, the boys who did not return after the midnight
patrols, and the dead who went back to sit on their houses' doorsteps

Now he feels a saunter in him through that opening, without knowing exactly where it is,
and where the poem is, in its painful incompleteness

Dampened with patience
overtaken by haste
he thought this kind of trickery
would befit the ending!

He could replace the "grandmother" with the "mother"
and observe the disintegrating plaster above the door's awning
the upside down chair
where the mallow flowers stumble and recover
without being nursed
and the gentle light through the back window
still in its same old place

Only the jasmine continued its climb, its eyes on the ceiling.

Darkness has a hole,
with space for a hand,
black, with five fingers and an arm
Darkness owns a house,
haunted by the dead,
reburying their secrets in the bricks
Darkness kills the voices
mouthing from the stones,
choking in nettles at the bottom of the well
And a cry,
a harsh yell of protest,
rises from the dark heart of the wood

Pretexts come with her absence
and with the waiting of boats between
noon and afternoon
when the light is deeply fissured
and the satisfied prisoners, our grandmothers
in the plains, comb the sleep of hills
then age in their fissured sleep

We haven't seen the sea
but we can be certain, after the rosary prayers,
it's behind the line of hills,
says the girl who sweeps the courtyard

When I remembered
. . . when we had come up to the lighthouse
you lit a fire and kept me warm.

I ascend the seven levels
Of sleep
In sleep you are
An elegy to the departed
An icon of censure

I ascend
The seven levels of sleep
All of them.

Nothing happens
Nothing ends.

I switch on the light
So that the dead
Can see the dream.

He has to return to shut that window,
it isn't entirely clear
whether this is what he must do,
things are no longer clear
since he lost them,
and it seems a hole somewhere within him
has opened up

Filling in the cracks has exhausted him
mending the fences
wiping the glass
cleaning the edges
and watching the dust that seems, since he lost them,
to lure his memories into hoax and ruse.
From here his childhood appears as if it were a trick!
Inspecting the doors has fully exhausted him
the window latches
the condition of the plants
and wiping the dust
that has not ceased flowing
into the rooms, on the beds, sheets, pots
and on the picture frames on the walls

Since he lost them he stays with friends
who become fewer
sleeps in their beds
that become narrower
while the dust gnaws at his memories "there"
. . . he must return to shut that window
the upper story window which he often forgets
at the end of the stairway that leads to the roof

Since he lost them
he aimlessly walks
and the day's small
purposes are also no longer clear.

The cart:
still lurches on since grandfather fled
the boggy fields
The family:
still bang our heads on the rocks
from those fields
And the seven dead:
summon up
a jet of blood -
it churns
through the fields
soaking through dust,
through pebbles,
through feathers,
and through pollen
The dynasty:
is built
on seven just hyenas -
hordes have followed them,
pursued
by faithful ghosts,
the family commandments
like clumsy heirlooms
heavy round their necks,
charm bracelets strung
with the cart, and the family
and the red jet of blood,
while the dynasty
the heirlooms and the ghosts
all turn to dust

Is there still time
to tell her,
Mother,
good evening,
I've come back
with a bullet in my heart
There is my pillow
I want to lie down
and rest.
If the war
ever comes knocking,
tell them: he's taking
his rest.