Ghassan Zaqtan: 33 poems

I'm going to see how they died
going toward that wreckage
going to see them there
tranquil on the hill of engagement

Dear Wednesday's narcissus, what time is it
what death is it
what planet in the widow's hand
five or three?

Her dress was blooming
we were
neglected flowers on her dress

Dear women's thresholds, how much is a lifetime
what time is a river
how many daggers in the blood
of the whirling storm
five or three?

We let the city play
and rolled our widespread shrouds shut

I'm going to see how they died
going toward that wreckage
going to see their death
hills of the north
wind-rise of the south
I'm going to call them by their names

Evening didn't come without its darkness
we slept roofless but with cover
and no survivor came in the night
to tell us of the death of others.
The roads kept whistling
and the place was packed with the murdered
who came from the neighboring quarter
whose screams escaped toward us.
We saw and heard
the dead walk on air
tied by the thread of their shock
their rustle pulling our bodies
off our glowing straw mats.
A glistening blade
kept falling over the roads.
The women gave birth only to those who passed
and the women will not give birth

Will the children forgive the generation
trampled by horses of war, exile and preparation for departure?

Will they think of us as we were:
ambushes in ravines
we'd shake our jealousy
and carve trees into the earth's shirt
to sit under
we the factional fighters
who'd shoo the clouds of war out of their carriages
and peer around our eternal siege
or catch the dead
like sudden fruit fallen on a wasteland?

Will the children forgive what we were:
missile shepherds and masters of exile and chaotic celebration
whenever a neighboring war gestured to us
we'd rise
to set up in its braids a place
good for love and residence?

The bombing rarely took a rest
the missile launchers rarely returned unharmed
we rarely picked flowers for the dead or went on
with our lives
If only that summer had
given us a bit of time's space
before our mad departure

Will they believe?

In Jabal Najmeh, by the woods, the wizard will stop me
by a passage for boats with black masts
where the dead sit before dawn in black garments and straw masks,
a passage for the birds
where white fog swims and gates open in the brush
and where someone is talking down the slope
and bells are heard and the rustles of flapping wings
resemble the forest passing over the mounting and nicking the night!
… and peasants, fishermen and hunters, and awestruck soldiers, Moabite,
Assyrian, Kurd, Mamluk, Hebraic with claims
from Egypt, Egyptians on golden chariots, nations
from white islands, Persians with black turbans,
and idolater-philosophers bending the reeds
and Sufis seeking the root of ailment …
the flapping of wings drags the forest toward the edges of darkness!
In Jabal Najmeh, by the woods
where the absentee's prayer spreads piety's rugs
and the canyon is seen through to its limits,
the furrowed sea scent cautiously passes by
and the cracks are like a jinn's harvest
and the monks' pleas glisten
as I glimpse the ghosts of lepers sleeping on decrepit cypress
In Jabal Najmeh, by the woods,
I will hear a familiar old voice,
my father's voice throwing dice toward me
Or Malek's voice
as he tows a blond horse behind him in his elegy
Or the voice of Hussein Barghouthi
laid to rest beneath almond trees
as he instructed in the text
And my voice:
You're not alone in the wilderness!

I have a suspicious heart, brother,
and a blind statue,
and the news that amateur refugees brought from Baghdad stunned me
there's a lot they haven't seen yet
they were crossing the bridge by chance

intentions are in the ports
befuddled as their owners left them,
incomplete as the murdered left them
and where our friend, the one you know, pointed, we went
without a moan or groan

our country is far
and intentions good

we left, as exiles leave, houses more beautiful than the roads
and women more faithful than passers-by
we weren't discouraged and our will wasn't stolen

we dreamt, as residents dream, of roads more beautiful than the houses
of women who furnished our bodies and altered our language
though this took us neither to hill nor sea

an infantry marching out of some front appeared
we heard its drone but didn't see it, and with worn-out eyes
and cracked feet they shook off the mud over the marble
and dried their boots on the billboards of the ‘founding father'

we watched
as if we had seen nothing, heard nothing

and it was possible to remember their lustful dreams, chase the ghosts
and touch the buttocks of women to be sure it was just a dream!

but there's no mercy for the dead in these cold corners
no reward for those who are in the know

there's only listening to the mountain where caves are born
and darkness grows like a carnivorous plant…

the cry of the birds at the bursting dawn didn't overtake us
we didn't stumble over the wisdom or obsessions of our predecessors
though what we saw is worth telling!

… and then
a bunch of slaves started climbing out of a hole, up the walls
even if the doors were wide open
they climbed down to the city, roamed its markets
men and children were shouting in the dark
swatting it with drums and dancing,
women undressing on the edge of an abyss to distract death
from their children
as one of the locals explained to us

we felt grateful for our exile and residence

and said to ourselves:
we are only marching exiles, our shadows don't trail us over the earth
and like textile workers we hold threads and spin them to weave memories
that breathe behind us and follow our steps like bewildered dogs

who are we that we should dislike what we don't know
or love what we have no business in!

then a jealous boy appeared:
his jealousy remained glistening on the fence after he left
and it blocked the path of cats, pedestrians, and the scent of basil
after the amateur refugees, with the news from Baghdad, had gone

his jealousy leaned on the breasts of a young woman
who came out of the shadows and took off her veil, placed it
on the grass by the soldiers' boots
just as I was moving to another dream …

all this would have been worthy of consideration and repetition
had a young philosopher from Ramallah not died at 4:16 that morning
surrounded by his students, admirers, and three friends
(two men and a woman) it would have been possible also to remember
and add other scattered things
so grief can appear and treason mature