A man dreamt
that he left
his city, one day, in a storm
that was bending the fields;
columns of dust rose at its approach
on the outskirts of a hamlet
that rode the wind, and wove
around his feet.
الأرشيف لشهر نوفمبر, 2007
I play alone.
An hour.
Or two.
I spread the cards on the table.
When will you show up?
Player, all this luck is for you.
Appear. I will stay up until dawn
waiting for your sight.
To whom will I show my cards?
Without you, what meaning to my game?
I will play. But first,
what are the rules: if I’m […]
From the start, Al-Sayyab1 knew
that the things we love
are few: a face
shining under the rags
in its tiny cradle
luminous like a loaf of bread.
Several women, kind
like the nursemaids of legend
and a handful of silt
moist like a chronicle of the flood -
These kept pursuing him
out of the apertures
of his memory,
the windows he […]
They were
the first dreamers
who embodied the shape
of a dream in clay:
a stairwell of prayers
that will scale
the heights.
They knew:
a stranger once
passed among them,
and disappeared.
His shade
will be redeemed
in the form
of a ziggurat -
this ship of the gods
whose figurehead
will rend the clouds.
And learned:
it is a sea of time,
on whose shore
from time to time,
we might glimpse
an ancestor’s
figure in white,
who […]
في وسط الساحة
سقط الرجل على ركبتيه.
- هل كان متعباً إلى حدّ
أن فقدَ القدرة على الوقوف؟
- هل وصل إلى ذلك السدّ
حيث تتكسّر موجة العمر النافقة؟
- هل قضى عليه الحزن بمطرقةٍ يا تُرى؟
هل كان إعصارُ الألم؟
- ربّما كانت فاجعةً لا يطيق على تحمّلها أحد.
- ربّما كان ملاك الرحمة
جاء ببلطته الريشيّة عندما حان له أن يجيء.
- ربّما كان […]