1
The poets leave
one after the other, at the end of the night.
They carried nothing but a poor man’s provisions
and open-return tickets.
I tell them: “Do not quicken your steps.
Brothers, wait another hour.
We are at the end of the night.”
But they leave.
The sky is not pitch black.  Only clouds
fall deeply  . . .
Black, they seem, and grey.  Dawn is leery, yet it is still dawn.
To a constant white cloud in the corner of the sky I say:
I am yours, my, crescent-shaped radiance.  I waited for you all night while you were under my pillow, pulling at my hairs and caressing.  You will stay with me.
Wherever I am you will be.  I will  tell the sky to clear.
I will proclaim you daylight.
Good morning, dear boy.

2
The poets leave
one after the other, at the end of a verse . . .
How did you end up at point zero?
How did you end up here?
Where did you leave our lanterns, the mountain tops?
Have you never watched the eyes of cats?
Have we followed a line to its end?
Yet, you still leave.
 
This mountain will not be hemmed.  This mountain we know.  From its shacks we will bring honey, and eagle feathers for my shield.  The flowers are without names.
And the threadbare spring, and the wolves that sniff for village smells.  There are passageways, the paths of goats and smugglers.  The soldiers are not guests here.  The saint’s grave is blessed with green ribbons.  And from houses we do not know, women and children come with candles and bread.
 
Good morning, dear mountains!

3
The poets leave
one after the other at the end of a branch.
No:
How can you leave me?
Did we not gather around tables of drink?
How can we say: The ripples on the water are ours.
How can we say: The branches are ours, and the golden autumn. 
And say: The beginning of the branch.
Yet you leave.
 
Tree, you are blessed. Flowering, you are blessed with peacock feathers and a hoopoe’s crest.  You are sacred where ants lay their eggs.  The porcupine circles you following the star, and from your branches grasshoppers chirp.  In silvery white night you fan yourself with air from paradise.  And in golden daylight you distil silver.  I will say: you are my first tree.  My hut and my tomb, and the crown I wear.
Good morning, poetry!

4
I will not blame you
I will not say goodbye through the wasteland of alcohol,
I will not bend when the storm erupts
I will  repeat your names . . .
and your skies.
I will be the trusted guard over what you left behind.
I will not be the prince of dust.

5
At night
at the end of the night
birds will come to me
and the prairie wolves will come wet with dew
and the gazelle will come
 
At the end of the night
seven poets will take refuge in my cave . . .

Amman, 29 November 1994
Translated by Khaled Mattawa

                        God save America
                       My home sweet home!

The French general who raised his tricolour
over Nugrat al-Salman where I was a prisoner thirty years ago . . .
in the middle of that U-turn
that split the back of the Iraqi army,
the general who loved St Emilion wines
called Nugrat al-Salman a fort . . .
Of the surface of the earth, generals know only two dimensions:
Whatever rises is a fort
whatever spreads is a battlefield.
How ignorant the general was!
But Liberation was better versed in topography.
The Iraqi boy who conquered her front page
sat carbonised behind a steering wheel
on the Kuwait–Safwan highway
while television cameras
(the booty of the defeated and their identity)
were safe in the truck like a storefront
on Rivoli Street.
The neutron bomb is highly intelligent,
it distinguishes between
an “I” and an “Identity”.

                    God save America
                    My home sweet home!
(Blues)

                   How long must I walk to Sacramento
                    How long will I walk to reach my home
                    How long will I walk to reach my girl
                    How long must I walk to Sacramento
                    For two days, no boat has sailed this stream
                    two days, two days, two days
                    Honey, how can I ride?
                    I know this stream
                    but, O but, O but, for two days
                    no boat has sailed this stream

                    La L La La L La
                    La L La La L La

                    A stranger gets scared
                    Don’t fear dear horse
                    Don’t fear the wolves of the wild
                    Don’t fear for the land is my land

                    La L La La L La
                    La L La La L La

                    A stranger gets scared

                    God save America
                    My home sweet home!
 
I  too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island
and John Silver’s parrot and the terraces of New Orleans
I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats and Abraham Lincoln’s dogs
I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia tobacco.
But I am not American.  Is that enough for the Phantom pilot to turn me back to the Stone Age!
I need neither oil, nor America herself, neither the elephant nor the donkey.
Leave me, pilot, leave my house roofed with palm fronds and this wooden bridge.
I need neither your Golden Gate nor your skyscrapers.
I need the village not New York.
Why did you come to me from your Nevada desert, soldier armed to the teeth?
Why did you come all the way to distant Basra where fish used to swim by our doorsteps.
Pigs do not forage here.  I only have these water buffaloes lazily chewing on water lilies.
Leave me alone soldier.
Leave me my floating cane hut and my fishing spear.
Leave me my migrating birds and the green plumes.
Take your roaring iron birds and your Tomahawk missiles.  I am not your foe. 
I am the one who wades up to the knees in rice paddies.
Leave me to my curse.
I do not need your day of doom.

                    God save America
                    My home sweet home!

America
let us exchange your gifts.
Take your smuggled cigarettes
and give us potatoes.
Take James Bond’s golden pistol
and give us Marilyn Monroe’s giggle.
Take the heroin syringe under the tree
and give us vaccines.
Take your blueprints for model penitentiaries
and give us village homes.
Take the books of your missionaries
and give us paper for poems to defame you. 
Take what you do not have
and give us what we have.
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.
 
Take the Afghani Mujahideen’s beard
and give us Walt Whitman’s beard filled with butterflies.
Take Saddam Hussain
and give us Abraham Lincoln
or give us no one.
 
Now as I look across the balcony
across the summer sky, the summery summer
Damascus spins, dizzied among television aerials
then it sinks, deeply, in the stories of the forts
                                           and towers
                                           and the arabesques of ivory
 and sinks, deeply, from cornerstones of faith
then disappears from the balcony.
 
And now
I remember trees:
the date palm of our mosque in Basra, at the end of Basra
the bird’s beak
and a child’s secret
a summer feast.
I remember the date palm.
I touch it.  I become it, when it falls black without fronds
when a dam fell hewn by lightning.
And I remember the mighty mulberry
when it rumbled, butchered with an axe . . .
to fill the stream with leaves
and birds
and angels
and green blood.
I remember when pomegranate blossoms covered the sidewalks,
the students were leading the workers’ parade . . .

The trees die
pummelled
dizzied,
not standing
the trees die.

                    God save America
                    My home sweet home!
 
We are not hostages, America
and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers . . .
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods
the gods of bulls
the gods of fires
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song . . .
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor
who emerges out of the farmers’ ribs
hungry
and bright
and raises heads up  high . . .
America, we are the dead
Let your soldiers come
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him
We are the drowned ones, dear lady
 
We are the drowned
Let the water come
 
Translated by Khaled Mattawa
 Damascus, 20 August 1995