State of Siege
Here, at the slopes of hills, in front of the sunset
and the hollow of time,
near fields with finite shadow,
we do what is done by unemployed people and prisoners:
We raise hope.
A country ready for dawn. We become less intelligent,
because we stare at the clock of victory.
There is no night in our night that is filled with artillery.
Our enemies stay up and give us light
in the darkness of dungeons.
This siege will remain until we teach our enemies;
samples from our poetry from antiquity.
Under siege, life becomes time,
between remembrance in its beginning
and forgetfulness in its end.
Here, at the rise of smoke, on the stairs of the house,
no time for time.
We do what is done by those ascending to God:
We forget pain.
Pain is:
When the housewife does not hang the laundry rope
and settles for the cleanliness of this world.
Soldiers measure the distance between existence
and nothingness with tanks’ binoculars.
We measure the distance between our bodies and the bombs
with the sixth sense.
Lingerers on our doorsteps,
come in and drink Arabic coffee with us.
Perhaps you would feel you are humans like us.
Lingerers on our doorsteps,
leave our mornings,
so we can be assured,
we are humans like you.
When the planes disappear,
doves fly; cleanse the cheek of the sky,
with free wings that reclaim the magnificence and ownership of
the atmosphere and playfulness.
And higher fly the doves, white, white.
I wish the sky were real, a man passing between two bombs
told me.
A woman told the cloud:
Cover my love, for my clothes are soaked in his blood.
If you are not rain my beloved
be a tree.
Full of fertility… Be a tree.
And if you are not a tree my beloved,
then be a rock,
full of humidity… Be a rock.
And it you are not a rock my beloved,
be a moon,
in the sleep of the inamorata, be a moon.
(That’s what a woman
told her son at his funeral).
“Me,” or “him.”
That’s how war begins.
But it ends with an uncomfortable meeting:
“Me and him.”
“I am her forever.”
That’s how love begins.
But when it ends,
it ends with an uncomfortable meeting:
“Me and her.”
The martyr clarifies to me: I did not look behind the horizon
for eternal virgins. I love life here on Earth,
between pine and fig trees,
but I found no way to it, so I looked
for it in the last thing I own:
The blood in the lapis lazuli body.
Peace to those who share my attention to the
trance of light; light of the butterfly, in the night of this tunnel.
Peace is the nostalgia of two enemies, separately,
for yawning on the sidewalk of boredom.
Peace is the sighing of lovers,
bathing with moonlight.
Peace is the breaking down of swords in front of nature’s beauty,
where the dew rusts the steel.
— Translated from Arabic by Ali Harb
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