Adonis

1. The leaves asleep under the wind are the wounds’ ship, and the ages collapsed on top of each other are the wound’s glory, and the trees rising out of our eyelashes are the wound’s lake. The wound is to be found on bridges where the grave lengthens and patience goes on to no end between the shores of our love and death. The wound is a sign, and the wound is a crossing too. 2. To the language choked by tolling bells I offer the voice of the wound. To the stone coming from afar to the dried-up world crumbling to dust to the time ferried on creaky sleighs I light up the fire of the wound. And when history burns inside my clothes and when blue nails grow inside my books, I cry out to the day, “Who are you, who tosses you into my virgin land?” And inside my book and on my virgin land I stare into a pair of eyes made of dust. I hear someone saying, “I am the wound that is born and grows as your history grows.” 3. I named you cloud, wound of the parting dove. I named you book and quill and here I begin the dialogue between me and the ancient tongue in the island of tomes in the archipelago of the ancient fall. And here I teach these words to the wind and the palms, O wound of the parting dove. 4. If I had a harbor in the land of dreams and mirrors, if I had a ship, if I had the remains of a city, if I had a city in the land of children and weeping, I would have written all this down for the wound’s sake, a song like a spear that penetrates trees, stone, and sky, soft like water unbridled, startling like conquest. 5. Rain down on our desert O world adorned with dream and longing. Pour down, and shake us, we, the palms of the wound, tear out branches from trees that love the silence of the wound, that lie awake staring at its pointed eyelashes and soft hands. World adorned with dream and longing world that falls on my brow like the lash of a wound, don’t come close—the wound is closer— don’t tempt me—the wound is more beautiful. That magic that your eyes had flung on the last kingdoms— the wound has passed over it, passed and did not leave a single sail to tempt toward salvation, did not leave a single island behind.

from “Elegy for the First Century” Bells on our eyelashes and the death throes of words, and I among fields of speech, a knight on a horse made of dirt. My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book, and I, under the skin of words, on the beaming banks of foam, a poet who sang and died leaving this singed elegy before the faces of poets, for birds at the edge of sky.

1 We travel upon the Ark, in mud and rain, Our oars promises from God. We live—and the rest of Humanity dies. We travel upon the waves, fastening Our lives to the ropes of corpses filling the skies. But between Heaven and us is an opening, A porthole for a supplication. "Why, Lord, have you saved us alone From among all the people and creatures? And where are you casting us now? To your other Land, to our First Home? Into the leaves of Death, into the wind of Life? In us, in our arteries, flows a fear of the Sun. We despair of the Light, We despair, Lord, of a tomorrow In which to start Life anew. If only we were not that seedling of Creation, Of Earth and its generations, If only we had remained simple Clay or Ember, Or something in between, Then we would not have to see This World, its Lord, and its Hell, twice over." 2 If time started anew, and waters submerged the face of life, and the earth convulsed, and that god rushed to me, beseeching, "Noah, save the living!" I would not concern myself with his request. I would travel upon my ark, removing clay and pebbles from the eyes of the dead. I would open the depths of their being to the flood, and whisper in their veins that we have returned from the wilderness, that we have emerged from the cave, that we have changed the sky of years, that we sail without giving in to our fears— that we do not heed the word of that god. Our appointment is with death. Our shores are a familiar and pleasing despair, a gelid sea of iron water that we ford to its very ends, undeterred, heedless of that god and his word, longing for a different, a new, lord.

The cities dissolve, and the earth is a cart loaded with dust Only poetry knows how to pair itself to this space. No road to this house, a siege, and his house is graveyard. From a distance, above his house a perplexed moon dangles from threads of dust. I said: this is the way home, he said: No you can’t pass, and aimed his bullet at me. Very well then, friends and their homes in all of Beirut’s are my companions. Road for blood now— Blood about which a boy talked whispered to his friends: nothing remains in the sky now except holes called “stars.” The city’s voice was too tender, even the winds would not tune its strings— The city’s face beamed like a child arranging his dreams for nightfall bidding the morning to sit beside him on his chair. They found people in bags: a person                                                 without a head a person                                                 without hands, or tongue a person                                                 choked to death and the rest had no shapes and no names. —Are you mad? Please don’t write about these things. A page in a book bombs mirror themselves inside of it prophecies and dust-proverbs mirror themselves inside of it cloisters mirror themselves inside of it, a carpet made of the alphabet disentangles thread by thread falls on the face of the city, slipping out of the needles of memory. A murderer in the city’s air, swimming through its wound— its wound is a fall that trembled to its name—to the hemorrhage of its name and all that surrounds us— houses left their walls behind and I am no longer I. Maybe there will come a time in which you’ll accept to live deaf and mute, maybe they’ll allow you to mumble: death and life resurrection and peace unto you. From the wine of the palms to the quiet of the desert . . . et cetera from a morning that smuggles its own intestines and sleeps on the corpses of the rebels . . . et cetera from streets, to trucks from soldiers, armies . . . et cetera from the shadows of men and women . . . et cetera from bombs hidden in the prayers of monotheists and infidels . . . et cetera from iron that oozes iron and bleeds flesh . . . et cetera from fields that long for wheat, and grass and working hands . . . et cetera from forts that wall our bodies and heap darkness upon us . . . et cetera from legends of the dead who pronounce life, who steer our life . . . et cetera from talk that is slaughter           and slaughter         and slitters of throats . . . et cetera from darkness to darkness to darkness I breathe, touch my body, search for myself and for you, and for him, and for the others and I hang my death between my face and this hemorrhage of talk . . . et cetera You will see— say his name say you drew his face reach out your hand toward him or smile or say I was happy once or say I was sad once you will see: there is no country there. Murder has changed the city’s shape—this stone is a child’s head— and this smoke is exhaled from human lungs. Each thing recites its exile . . .                a sea of blood—and what do you expect on these mornings except their arteries set to sail into the darkness, into the tidal wave of slaughter? Stay up with her, don’t let up— she sits death in her embrace and turns over her days tattered sheets of paper. Guard the last pictures of her topography— she is tossing and turning in the sand in an ocean of sparks— on her bodies are the spots of human moans. Seed after seed are cast into our earth— fields feeding on our legends, guard the secret of these bloods. I am talking about a flavor to the seasons and a flash of lightning in the sky. Tower Square—(an engraving whispers its secrets to bombed-out bridges . . . ) Tower Square—(a memory seeks its shape among dust and fire . . . ) Tower Square—(an open desert chosen by winds and vomited  . . . by them . . . ) Tower Square—(It’s magical to see corpses move/their limbs in one alleyway, and their ghosts in another/and to hear their sighs . . . ) Tower Square—(West and East and gallows are set up— martyrs, commands . . . ) Tower Square—(a throng of caravans: myrrh and gum Arabica and musk and spices that launch the festival . . . ) Tower Square—(let go of time . . . in the name of place) —Corpses or destruction, is this the face of Beirut? —and this a bell, or a scream? —A friend? —You? Welcome. Did you travel? Have you returned? What’s new with you? —A neighbor got killed . . . / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A game / —Your dice are on a streak. —Oh, just a coincidence / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Layers of darkness and talk dragging more talk.

Even the wind wants to become a cart pulled by butterflies. I remember madness leaning for the first time on the mind’s pillow. I was talking to my body then and my body was an idea I wrote in red. Red is the sun’s most beautiful throne and all the other colors worship on red rugs. Night is another candle. In every branch, an arm, a message carried in space echoed by the body of the wind. The sun insists on dressing itself in fog when it meets me: Am I being scolded by the light? Oh, my past days— they used to walk in their sleep and I used to lean on them. Love and dreams are two parentheses. Between them I place my body and discover the world. Many times I saw the air fly with two grass feet and the road dance with feet made of air. My wishes are flowers staining my days. I was wounded early, and early I learned that wounds made me. I still follow the child who still walks inside me. Now he stands at a staircase made of light searching for a corner to rest in and to read the face of night again. If the moon were a house, my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep. They are taken by dust carrying me to the air of seasons. I walk, one hand in the air, the other caressing tresses that I imagine. A star is also a pebble in the field of space. He alone who is joined to the horizon can build new roads. A moon, an old man, his seat is night and light is his walking stick. What shall I say to the body I abandoned in the rubble of the house in which I was born? No one can narrate my childhood except those stars that flicker above it and that leave footprints on the evening’s path. My childhood is still being born in the palms of a light whose name I do not know and who names me. Out of that river he made a mirror and asked it about his sorrow. He made rain out of his grief and imitated the clouds. Your childhood is a village. You will never cross its boundaries no matter how far you go. His days are lakes, his memories floating bodies. You who are descending from the mountains of the past, how can you climb them again, and why? Time is a door I cannot open. My magic is worn, my chants asleep. I was born in a village, small and secretive like a womb. I never left it. I love the ocean not the shores.

The child I was came to me once, a strange face He said nothing              We walked each of us glancing at the other in silence, our steps a strange river running in between We were brought together by good manners and these sheets now flying in the wind then we split, a forest written by earth watered by the seasons’ change. Child who once was, come forth— What brings us together now, and what do we have to say?