Selections

WRINKLES ON THE WIND'S FOREHEAD

1

The wind is a blind mother
stumbling
over the corpses
no shrouds
save the clouds
but the dogs
are much faster

2

The moon is a graveyard
for light
the stars women
wailing

3

The wind was tired
from carrying the coffins
and leaned
against a palm tree
A satellite enquired:
“Where to now?”
the silence
 in the wind’s cane
murmured:
“Baghdad”
and the palm tree caught fire


4
The soldier’s fingers scrape and scrabble,
like question marks
or curving sickles,
they search the belly of the wind
for weapons
. . .
nothing but smoke
and depleted uranium


5
How narrow is this strait
which sleeps
between two wars
but I must cross it


6
My heart is a stork
perched on a distant dome
in Baghdad
its nest made of bones
its sky
of death


7
This is not the first time
myths wash their face
with our blood
Here they are
looking in horizon’s mirror
as they don our bones


8
War salivates
Tyrants and historians pant
A wrinkle smiles
on the face of a child
who will play
during a break
between wars
9
The Euphrates
is a long procession
Cities pat its shoulders
as palm trees weep


10
The child plays
in time’s garden
but war calls upon her
from inside:
Come on in!


11
The grave is a mirror
into which the child looks
and dreams:
when will I grow up
and be like my father
. . .
dead?


12
The Tigris and Euphrates
are two strings
in death’s lute
and we are songs
. . . or fingers strumming


13
For two and a half wars
I’ve been here
in this room
whose window is a grave
that I’m afraid of opening
There’s a mirror on the wall
and when I stand before it
naked
my bones laugh
as the fingers of death
tickle the door


14
I place an ear
on the belly of this moment
I hear wailing
I place it on another moment
– the same!


Cairo, May-June, 2003


Translated by the poet
The Arabic original was published in the cultural supplement of an-Nahar newspaper, Beirut, August 2003