Zaqtan Ghassan

33 poems

33 poems

by Ghassan Zaqtan

That Life

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

Collective Death

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 They Believe

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?

You'Re Not Alone In The Wilderness

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!

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

Alone And The River Before Me

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

chief among them

Buddha's lilac statue

or the photograph of a house owner in his furnished living room

staring at us out of his conservative classical death

the father's hermetic contemplation

a complicity of sorts with the daughter

as he expires beneath the oxygen apparatus

a woman's voice as she conceals her infidelity

through the phone's ten thick layers

it would have been possible to document his death or to remember

other scattered things in another context, like his dead weight

or the white of his eyes resembling a final resurrection

before the sirens were lit

if only he did not stand a bit crooked from the world, as happened with Cavafy

whose poetry he did not concern himself with as he did other poets

I have a suspicious heart, brother

and my stance is whole

there is no one who can guess the whirling in my head

and I no longer trust those night travelers!

&&&

I have a suspicious heart and my admirers are obstinate

and in the wadis

if you look closely are birds and hunters

who wear in the dark longing's smell

and its form

hunters who have other motives in the light

other labyrinths

and paths that make a hyena pant

and the signifier and the signified are lost

among them:

wind-instrument blowers

wily attars in the markets

barefoot narrators behind the slaves

and pretentious mockers standing on their bank

where we were born

white from black fathers

there are among them more than enough to make me superfluous…

my guests are blind and dervishes

as aforementioned

I describe them as they appeared

in secret

as blessed and guarded narrators born

with absent minds

but if absently

they died they'd notice

in meaning they have a jinn's rank

and its language

and in structure a paranoid's body

and levity

…and for some reason I can't quite recall now

he moved a little away, turned his back to me and stared at the river

and said: I have nothing left to give you except this:

and pointed to the water

then wiped my face with his hands

I became alert and imagined I was in a garden in Baghdad whose fence

I had passed by when I was a kid…

and there was in the dark a fishing boat

a soft paddle transmitting the scent of sparks from across the river

quiet sounds coming from the brothel,

and all this seemed to me like breathing…

what I don't see as it has gathered

I rose and looked around

and there I was alone and the river before me,

with two maidens in it, one black, the other white

and whenever I slept or was distracted he would come, sit before me,

talk to me and I would listen, then he'd wipe his hands

with my face and I'd awaken, transported from one land to another land

one time to another time…

until I reached the Tigris bank that night where the two maidens were

and I realized the state I had been in, and longed for those I'd left behind

so I composed these lines for the occasion:

I raise your secret to all expose mine to man and jinn

I light a fire of jasmine and chase a dream of fleeing mirth

I gather behind you the crowd's shadow a salaam of vanishing to the vanished

and in pleasure I am alluring and in sleep I see the invisible

as if I were your radiance and you my whirling spell

I played and spun the soul of life as one seeks a plaything

and let loose prophetic horses and rode drunker than a drunk

so here I am before you a triumph brought to the victor

you're all I have as I'm paraded the pleased around his benefactor

I elevated him higher in my prayers and embellished his favours then remembered

what he had told me as he was bidding me farewell:

‘as for that which you did not ask me about

it's your secret, no one else's

and it doesn't concern me

I neither help you with it

nor release you from it'

and I had asked him about all things but this!

he had tutored me

when I was a kid,

I would repeat whatever he said

three times

before the rooster crowed,

I would listen

then repeat what he had said twice

and by the third time

I'd add to it my own.

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

The One You Accidentally Found In The Mirror

The one you accidentally found in the mirror

in its dark corner to be exact

was there alone thinking of you

befriending your solitude

The one, because you are in need of company no more,

you called out of his darkness and fed

with your hands

You used to call him and he'd come

point to him and he'd jump to his feet

and as soon as you'd turn your back he'd unload on you

his hyena stare before returning to his corner

Now you recall all this

since you must pass a long time here

staring at the mirror

at its dark corner to be exact

as he sits in your chair

feeds you with his own hands

and passes you some water

calls to you

and you come

The Absentee's Song

By morning travelers knocked on her door

but she didn't wake

By noon a bird stirred her

from a book but she didn't wake

And at night a girl came from the orchard

her hair was short

her sleeves filthy

her load of quince

She called out to her dead kin

for seven nights

and seven days

full in count

The girl who knocked on the door at night

was there

with short hair

filthy sleeves

and a crow's sound

The caw awakened

a woman in her thirties

from her death

who said to the little girl:

I gave birth to you in a dream,

you aren't real for us

to love you like other girls,

leave for twenty years

so we can love you

and wait for you,

but don't grow older in the fog

lest we die.

Black Horses

The slain enemy

Think of me without mercy in their eternal sleep

Ghosts ascend the stairways of the house, rounding the corners

The ghosts I picked up from the roads

Collecting them from the sins around other people's necks.

The sin hangs at the throat like a burden

It is there I nurture my ghosts and feed them

The ghosts that float like black horses in my dreams.

With the vigor of the dead the latest Blues song rises

While I reflect on jealousy

The door is warped open, breath seeps through the cracks

The breath of the river

The breath of drunkards, the breath

Of the woman who awakes to her past in a public park.

When I sleep

I see a horse grazing the grass

When I fall asleep,

The horse watches over my dreams

On my table in Ramallah

There are unfinished letters

And pictures of old friends

The manuscript of a young poet from Gaza

An hourglass

And opening lines that flap in my head like wingsِ

I want to memorize you like that song in first grade

The one I hold onto

Complete and

With no mistakes

The lisp, the tilt of the head, off key

The small feet pounding the concrete so eagerly

The open palms pounding the benches.

They all died in the war

My friends and classmates

Their little feet

Their eager little hands… they still pound the floors of each room

They pound the tables;

And still pound the pavements, the backs of the passersby, their shoulders.

Wherever I go

I see them

I hear them.

Additions To The Past

The letters in the widow's room

In the straw basket

On the bed purged of sleep

In the intention to fast which lurks

In the air of the corridor.

The vegetables, normally purchased in the morning

The tickets,

The dawn bus on a Thursday

The pillows

The candles

The forbearance…, where holy phrases are

Gaudily etched

In the carvings

The edge of the cupboard from the crack of the door

The door itself… where the assembled hymns

Flutter like kerchiefs on the darkness of the plain.

The shadow of the air

The novel she has not returned to the shelf,

She cannot remember!

Its heroes fall dead to the ground

She sweeps them up

One after the other

With her broom, her reproaches and her prayers

The letters remain unopened

The dead

Return through the crack of the door

To steal the flower vase

The orange sheet

And the covers

The Trench

How strange are the days of salt

It is as if they belong to others

And like a well-plotted tragedy

Just brought to a close

They begin to breathe as we remember them

The hills forgotten in the boredom of the slopes

The mountains that aspire towards the west

The wandering caravans of death

The faith of the dead, complete.

The hands that emerge from the darkness

To tell you everything

The deep fraternity that does not lead to wisdom

The words no longer suitable for high places

Strange are the days of salt

Now alone in the abyss

Disparaged like rotten seed

And while we ascend,

Because that's all we can do

The days roll away into the distance behind us,

Abandoned, and can never return

Our dark complexions

Our attempts at sleep

…..Names, endlessly long titles

Dialects also

Proclaiming a countryside

No longer necessary.

How strange are the days of salt

They are not even worthy to be remembered.

Guide

He pointed for us . . .

this way.

And disappeared

in the wreckage of houses

after the explosion

his fingers in the wall-gap

still pointing:

this way . . .

this way.

Handkerchief

Nothing's left to say between us

everything went

into the train that hid its whistle

in the smoke that didn't become a cloud

in the departure that gathered your limbs

Nothing's left to say between us

so let your death be

the insight of dazzling silver

and let the sun of those cities

be a rose on your shoulders

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

An Enemy Descends The Hill

As he descends,

As we watch him descend,

As he conveys to us that he is

About to descend

Warily, silently

His illicit presence

As he carefully listens at the shrubs.

His fear as he descends

The withheld silence

That he is not 'us'

Not 'here'

Death begins.

He seizes a flower

Just a flower

With no message to convey

No vase for it.

From the hill

He can see

The military checkpoint

The paratroopers

He can see the desperate people;

The slopes of the mountains;

The only path

Where their feet will leave imprints in the rocks

In mud and water.

He can also see

The losses from the hill

Left hurriedly behind

The equivocation of shadows

Where the mustached enemy

Resembles the dead Arabs here.

In the slopes of the mountains

The caves will all appear peaceful

The road always look the same.

As he descends

The caves in the mountains

Continue to stare

They blink in the cold.

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

The Camp Prostitute

What those intend who visit her house

Is palpably felt

So pure, so proud.

Those who stayed late in the fields

Will find her hanging near the little trees

The five mossy steps

Then the bougainvillea plant by the door.

Her bracelets jingling in their sleep like a phantom horse

Her undergarments coloring their dreams

Her breasts well trodden like the path to the mill

Her ritual movements between the bed and the wash basin

Like a popular song all the rage.

The still life on the wall

The sheets and two pillows

The scent of cheap cologne

The nails behind the door

Where the smell of their clothes still lingers

The jasmine outside the window

The numbed convolutions of her body

The strain pervading her silence

The intentions of those passing through to her house

The passersby and the visitors,

The students, clerks and chickens

The vans, the guards and the dogs,

The porters, the cats and the vegetable sellers

The fathers and sons

All those who have left their smell in her broken sleep

They were all of them there

Behind the kids

The cart

The coffin

So pure, on their way to her destination.

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

Beirut, August 1982

How I wish he had not died

in last Wednesday's raid

as he strolled through Nazlat al-Bir —

my friend with blond hair,

as blond as a native of the wetlands of Iraq.

Like a woman held spellbound at her loom,

all summer long the war was weaving its warp and weft.

And that song, O Beiruuuuut!,

sang from every single radio

in my father's house in Al-Karama —

and probably in our old house in Beit Jala

(which, whenever I try to find it in the maze of the camp,

refuses to be found).

That song sang of what we knew —

it sang of our streets, narrow and neglected,

our people cheek by jowl in the slums made by war.

But the song did not sing about that summer in Beirut,

it did not tell us what was coming —

aeroplanes, bombardment, annihilation…

The song was singing while my friend from Iraq —

who'd thought I was Moroccan from the countryside there —

limped bleeding to his death…

His blond hair will never fade,

a beam of light seared into memory.

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

A Young Man From Al-Jaheer Expresses His Regrets…

I must leave this town:

a town where the sun never shines on me,

where there's never any shade,

a town with no bar to drown all my sorrows,

a place where no one even knows I exist!

I must move on surreptitiously,

with no regrets nor bitterness….

I don't have a place in the official celebrations,

nor a seat of my own in the gardens.

Those birds have shown me the way:

I may not have a horse

but I have nothing to fear

there are no walls around me….

But I must leave at once!

I must throw its old laws to the dogs,

and grind its traditions in the dirt,

then slip away, under cover of darkness….

It was night the first time I got here —

the days before my hair had turned grey —

I fetched up here adrift and mixed up,

as rootless as a houseplant in a tub.

In those days my stride was firm,

and my voice never wavered,

In those days I never fell silent….

Now I'm exhausted by the gossip of this place,

I'm worn out by the corruption,

by those obtuse, hotheaded women

by the drunken, deluded parades every night,

by the babbling old men, the fanatics wailing and repenting….

I must get out!

I must shake this town's dust from my feet….

So while the shepherds return from the well,

while the indolent elders sneak back from their dens,

while the preachers come out of the darkness,

and the windows slam shut in the sandstorm,

by the time they are wallowing in their dreams

and the lines become blurred

between the sacred and the profane,

where day becomes night….

— I'll be away on the far side of the valley,

by the edge of the cedar woods, on top of the hill.

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

Four Sisters From Zakaria

Four sisters

climb the hill alone

in black clothes.

Four sisters sigh

facing the thicket.

Four sisters in the dark

read wet letters.

A train coming

from Artouf* passed

behind the picture.

A horse carrying

a girl from Zakaria*

neighs on the ridge

across the plain.

In the gorge

clouds slowly pass.

Four sisters

from Zakaria, alone

in black clothes

on the hill.

Remembering Fatima

How clear it was the singing of the Moroccans who were swimming

on the river's face before sunset, the women who leaned on the bridge

among their children and vegetable baskets and tombs of saints…

Distant Rabat with its people where al-Andalus hides,

Rabat, whenever I say I shall leave its halls, I spread for my will a rug

and it spreads a rug

O Fatima

if only you would lean my way

or remember me,

that was the river's song,

my heart would quiver

and you'd make me happy

and the gazelle in the hills

would find its way…

but Fatima was only a song

released by boats

and dead women on the bridge

in the nights of Rabat.

The Bird Follows Me

In the year two thousand or a little before, there maybe was

a prelude that inhabited me, it resembled summer

in the rooms of bachelors,

I used to spin it in my speech…

Like a pleasant gait on en edge of marble or its dusting

from what the hoofs of mules leave behind

as they climb up the wadi…

'…in my house

women give birth to rings

and disappear from the world behind the door,

here is the paradise of the one I love

and the journey

of the one who saw…'

A prelude like other preludes

I didn't retrieve from muttering

Like a straw bird

It follows me…

Cavafy's Builders

I have a tune in the melody

with which I did not arrive

but it is my only gold

and means

It has the probability of improvisation

the tenderness of verbs

and the solidity of narration

As if secret builders Cavafy had awakened

were passing through the hills

and started digging by my pillow!

Carving On Wood

In the house of cactus

I finish what I started

2

a novel for death and the dead

and a chapter on bird matters

3

my house is my journey and the wind my door

windows are what I saw

4

I lost my fortune

but kept my acumen

5

a blind man with sight by the falcon's nest sculpts

my solitude so I'd be loved by a variety of selections

6

I cajoled hyenas and besides myself

trusted no one

7

I left no land to return to

and kept no road to arrive

8

in the house of cactus when I came to

I had a full name

and golden hands

"and untethered to remembrance

I was".

The Stranger In His Icon

Nature that has left me hopeless

became arid in the fields

my abandoned homes in others' memories and feats

the girls on the pier

with ill-intent as they wait for me

the wolf's dream in its wilderness

the hyena desiring me and its neighbor

the cypress I tallied

the roads I folded

become distant and similar

while I forget and remember

I, who exaggerated everything,

go as alone as my mother had birthed me

and sit in my icon.

Ancient Alleyways

Aside form her fingers, she got no sleep

she was there suspended in remembrance

patching up their dreams in a dim light

while

one bell was crimping the path to her house

one patient bell ascending the hillside

of junkyard and convent

One bell was limping behind the fence

and the Muslim cemetery

and passing in the privacy of jinn and sleeping dead

by the springs on the boulevards of birds

One bell for stranger women

for the few wishes and for summer

for old outfits and school books

and boys dead by the attic doors

One bell ascending the hill behind the ancient time

behind the shrubs on the foot-slope

where old dogs are tucked in the story

and the houses are gathered in the patient air

One bell was calling her by her name while ascending

perhaps to see her letter cursive

above the pine grove

He Wasn'T Sleeping

There's a helpless woman in his sleep

a recluse woman preoccupied with simple thoughts

and needless accessories

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 Long Of Going Back There

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.

Everything As It Was

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

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

Remembering The Grandmother

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.

The Sleeper's Song

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.

Translated by May Jayyusi and Alan Brownjohn

A Picture Of The House At Beit Jala

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.

Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

Family Heirlooms

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

Pillow

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.

Wolves

The birds' departure from his heart

leaves the plains white

where the story is white

and sleep is white

and silence is the caller's icon.

A laugh of sand will sprout when the door is opened

from fear's angle, a hymn

for the grand winter, and the voices

of those who left long ago will jump like grasshoppers

when the door is opened.

Wait, wait a moment

for us to dry a moment

there's in our trace

a reckless lament

and a ceramic bird …

and watch for the necklaces on the ceiling

Why don't you turn the lights on

or be happy with sitting

and watch for the fruits on the ground

Your voice in my room exhausts the silence

the silence of pots

the silence of shelves

the silence of writing

the silence of lighting

and the silence of survival

which I have been gathering for years

with the patience of one who's alone with the garden in summer

or one who retrieves absence

the absence

that never stops.

Content

Zaqtan Ghassan 33 poems

33 poems by Ghassan Zaqtan

That Life

Collective Death

Will They Believe

You'Re Not Alone In The Wilderness

Alone And The River Before Me

The One You Accidentally Found In The Mirror

The Absentee's Song

Black Horses

Additions To The Past

The Trench

Guide

Handkerchief

An Enemy Descends The Hill

The Camp Prostitute

Beirut, August 1982

A Young Man From Al-Jaheer Expresses His Regrets…

Four Sisters From Zakaria

Remembering Fatima

The Bird Follows Me

Cavafy's Builders

Carving On Wood

The Stranger In His Icon

Ancient Alleyways

He Wasn'T Sleeping

He Thought Long Of Going Back There

Everything As It Was

Darkness

Remembering The Grandmother

The Sleeper's Song

A Picture Of The House At Beit Jala

Family Heirlooms

Pillow

Wolves