Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (4 page)

I choose a cloudy day to go past the old well.

Perhaps it is full of sky. Perhaps it has gone beyond meaning

and beyond the shepherd’s sayings. I shall drink of its water with cupped hands

and say to the dead around it: Greetings, ye who remain

around the well in the water of the butterfly! I shall pick up the inula

from a stone: Greetings, O little stone! Perhaps we were

the wings of a bird that causes us pain. Greetings,

O moon that hovers around its image; which it will

never meet! And I shall say to the cypress: Beware of what

the dust is telling you. Perhaps we were here two strings of a violin

at the banquet of the guardians of lapis lazuli. Perhaps we were

the arms of a lover…

I had been walking side by side with myself: Be strong,

Comrade, raise up the past like the horns of a goat

with your hands, and sit down near your well. Perhaps the harts

of the watercourse will notice you… The voice cries out –

Your voice is a voice of stone for the broken present…

I have not yet completed my brief visit to oblivion…

I did not take with me all the tools of my heart:

My bell in the pine tree’s breeze

My stairway near the sky

My stars around the roofs

My hoarseness from the bite of old salt…

And I said to memory: Greetings, O spontaneous words of grandmother,

It takes us back to our white days beneath her drowsiness…

And my name rings like an old pound coin of gold at

The gate of the well. I hear the desolation of forefathers

Between the distant meem and waw, like an uncultivated watercourse

And I hide my friendly tiredness. I know that I

Shall come back alive, after a few hours, from the well into which

I have not thrown Joseph or his brothers’ fear

Of echoes. Beware! Your mother put you here,

Near the gate of the well: and went off to a talisman… .

So do with yourself what you want. I did by myself what

I want. I grew up by night in the tale between the sides

Of the triangle: Egypt, Syria, and Babylon. Here,

By myself I grew up without the goddesses of agriculture. (They were

Washing the pebbles in the olive grove. They were wet

With dew)… and I saw that I had fallen

On me from the departure of the caravans near a snake.

I found none to complete but my ghost. The earth

Threw me out of its earth, and my name rings on my steps,

Like a horseshoe; Draw near… so that I may come back from this

Emptiness to you O eternal Gilgamesh in your name!…

Be my brother! And go with me to shout into the old well…

Perhaps it is filled, like a woman, with the sky,

And perhaps it has over meaning and what

Is going to happen as my birth from my first well is awaited!

We shall drink of its water with cupped hands,

We shall say to the dead around it, Greetings,

Ye who live in the water of the butterfly,

O ye dead, greetings!

In the olive grove, east

Of the springs, my grandfather has withdrawn into

His deserted shadow. On his shadow: there has grown no

Legendary grass, no cloud of lilac has flowed inside the shrine

*

The earth is like a robe embroidered

With a needle of sumac in his broken

Dreams… grandfather has awoken

To collect the weeds from his vineyard

Underground, beneath the black street…

*

He taught me the Qur'an under the great basil tree

East of the well,

From Adam we came and from Eve

In the garden of oblivion.

Grandfather! I am the last of the living

In the desert, so let us rise!

*

The sea and the desert around his name,

Naked of protectors

Knew neither my grandfather nor his sons

Who stand now around the ‘Nūn'

In the Surrat ‘al-Rahman'.

O God… So bear witness!

*

He was one born of himself

Buried alive, near the fire,

In himself,

So let him grant to the phoenix of his burnt

Secret what it needs after him

To light the lanterns in the temple

*

In the olive groves, east of the springs

Grandfather has withdrawn into his lonely shadow.

The sun does not rise on his shadow.

On his shadow, no shadow falls

And Grandfather forever, is far away…

One day I thought of travelling, and a goldfinch settled on

Her hand and fell asleep. It was enough that I caress a branch of a vineyard

In haste… for her to understand that my wine glass

Was full. Enough that I go to bed early for her to see

My dream clearly, and spend her night watching over it…

Enough that a letter come from me for her to know that

My address had changed, above the corridors of prisons, and that

My days circled around her… and about her

My mother counts my twenty fingers and toes from afar.

She combs my hair in the golden strand of her own hair. She seeks

In my underwear for foreign women,

She darns my torn socks. I did not grow up at her hand

As we wished: I and she, we parted company at the slope

Of the marble… clouds signalled to us, and to a goat

That will inherit the place. Exile has set up for us two Languages:

A spoken… so that the dove can understand it and preserve the memory

And a formal language… so that I can interpret her shadow to the shadows!

I live still in your ocean. You did not say what

A mother says to her sick child. I was sick from the brass moon

On the tents of the Badu. Do you remember

The road we took when we fled to Lebanon, where you forgot me:

And forgot the bread-bag (it was wheaten bread).

And I did not shout so as not to waken the guards.

The scent of dew put me on your shoulders. O gazelle who lost

There her home and her mate…

Around you there was no time for sentimental talk.

You kneaded all the noontide with basil. You baked

The cockscomb for the sumac. I know what ruins your heart, pierced

By the peacock, since you were driven a second time from Paradise.

Our whole world has changed, our voices have changed. Even

Our greeting to each other dropped off like a button on sand,

Making no sound. Say: Good morning!

Say anything to me so that life may be kind to me.

She is Hagar's sister. Her maternal sister. She weeps

With the reed pipes the dead who have not died. There are no graves around

Her tent to show how the sky opened up, and she does not

See the desert behind my fingers: so as to see her garden

on the face of the mirage, old time hurries her on

To an inevitable futility: her father flew like

A Circassian on the marriage steed. But her mother

Prepared, without tears, for her husband's wife,

Her henna, and checked out her anklets…

We only meet to take our leave of each other when our talk converges.

She says to me, for instance: Marry any woman,

So long as she is foreign, more beautiful than the local girls. But, do not

Trust any woman but me. Do not always trust

Your memories. Do not burn to enlighten your mother,

That is her honourable trade. Do not long for the promises

Of dew. Be realistic as the sky. Do not long

For your grandfather's black cloak, or your grandmother's

Many bribes, be as free in the world as a foal.

Be who you are, where you are. Carry

Only the burden of your heart… Come back when

Your land has widened into the land, and has changed its conditions…

My mother lights the last stars of Canaan

Around my looking glass,

And throws into my last poem her shawl!

From the fortress the clouds drift down, blue,

Onto the alleyways…

The silk shawl flies

And the flock of pigeons flies

And on the face of the water of the pool the sky moves a little and flies.

And my spirit flies, like a worker-bee, among the alleyways

And the sea eats its bread, bread of Acre

And polishes its seal, as it has for five thousand years

And throws its cheek against its cheek

Ritual of long, long marriage

*

The poem says:

Let us wait

Until the window comes down

Over ‘the album’ of this tour guide

*

I enter by way of her stone armpit, as

A wave enters eternity, I cross

The centuries as if crossing from room to room

I see in myself the familiar contents of time:

A Canaanite girl’s looking glass,

Combs of ivory,

An Assyrian soup bowl,

The sword of the man who guarded his Persian master’s sleep,

The sudden leap of falcons from one flag to another

Over the masts of fleets…

*

If I had another present

I might own the keys of my yesterday

And if my yesterday were here

I might own all of my tomorrow…

*

Obscure is my progress up the long alleyway

Leading to an obscure moon over the copper market.

Here a palm tree relieves me of the load of the tower,

And thought of songs carries simple tools

Around me, to make a recurrent tragedy, and imagination

A starving pedlar, roaming comfortably over the dust,

As if I were unconcerned with what would happen

To me at Julius Caesar’s festivities… before long!

I and my beloved are drinking

The water of happiness

From one cloud

And falling into one jar!

*

I disembarked at her port, nothing except

That my mother lost her kerchiefs here…

No tale for me here. I change

Gods or negotiate with other gods. No tale for me here

That I should burden my memory with barley

And names of her guards who stand at my shoulder

Waiting for the dawn of Tuthmosis. I have no sword,

No tale for me here that I should divorce the mother who

Gave me her kerchiefs to carry, each a cloud, a cloud over

The old part of Acre… on departure!

*

Other things will happen,

Henri will deceive

Qalawun, after a while

Clouds will rise red above the serried date palms…

Poetry is our stairway to a moon which Anat hangs

Over her garden, like a looking glass for lovers without hope, and she wanders

Over the wilderness of herself, two women unreconciled:

There is a woman who can turn water back to its spring.

And a woman who sets fire to forests,

As for steeds

Let them dance for long over two abysses.

No death there… and no life.

My poem is froth of a gasping man, the scream of an animal

At its climbing up

And at its naked fall: Anat!

I want both of you together, love and war, Anat

And to Hell with me… I love you, Anat!

And Anat is killing herself

In herself

And for herself

And recreates space so that creatures can pass

In front of her distant picture over Mesopotamia

Over Syria. All directions are conform

About the sceptre of lapis lazuli and the seal of the virgin: Do not

Delay in this lower world. Come back from there

To nature and natures, Anat!

The water of the well dried up after you, valleys dried up,

The rivers dried up after your death. Tears

Evaporated from a pottery jar, and the air snapped

From dryness like a piece of wood. We broke like the fence

On your departure. Desires dried up in us. Prayer

Has been calcified. Nothing lives after your death. Life

Dies, like words between two travelling to hell,

O Anat

Tarry no longer in the lower world! Perhaps

New goddesses have come down to us because of your going away

And we have become subject to the mirage, perhaps the cunning shepherds

Have found a goddess, near the dust, and priestesses have believed in her

So come back, and bring back, bring back the land of truth

And allusion

The land of Canaan, the origin.

The common land of your breasts,

The common land of your thighs

so that miracles may return

To Jericho,

At the door of the abandoned temple… No

Death there and no life

Chaos at the door of judgement. No tomorrow

Comes. No past comes to say goodbye.

No memories

Fly from the direction of Babylon above our palm tree, no

Dream entertains us, so as to appease a star

Which is a button of your dress, O Anat

And Anat creates herself

From herself

And for herself

And flies after the Greek ships,

Under another name,

Two women who will never be reconciled…

And the steeds,

Let them dance long over two abysses. No

Death there and no life

There I neither live nor die

Neither does Anat

Neither does Anat!