Banipal (UK) Magazine of Modern Arab Literature - Selections - Banipal No 31

Nazih Abu Afach
Four Poems

CAIN’S GRANDSONS

When you say “I love you”
I put my hand on my heart.
When you say “brother”
I smell in your compassionate call
the softness of poison in the mouth,
the bite of a bullet in the back.
When you stretch your arms
to embrace me
I run from you,
and take refuge with my first killers
(Cain and his grandsons)
whose knives will pierce your neck
before you turn the next corner.

FOR HOW LONG?

The earth is overburdened
with a terrible legacy
of blood
sighs
doctrines
warriors
and prayers by those
who have a monopoly on God and truth …

The earth …
How long has it endured?
How long will it endure?

TOURISTS

Like one envying the dead for their clothes,
they flirt with the sun of the East
while we are smothered by its darkness.

A PORTRAIT

I dream of the past
and deliberately forget the future,
spending what is left of my life
inside hell’s ornate walls.
I call it the house of the beast,
the beast calls it the home of man.
This is me.

From the author’s collection [The Memory of The Elements], 2005