Tell Life

For Ghassan Zaqtan 1 I now release from my blood                the bird of   thirty she wasted that’s how wars                                        crumble us I now tell those                                        who are exhausted from the expense of children the secret                              of   happiness and happiness itself from what is arrived at                          but doesn’t come from the language                                  of   balance defeat                                                        has the taste of    being shrouded                                 with another’s banner while your enemies                                chant your names Some music                                              some shelling will strike our dead                                 who flew off in the early raids have you seen them                                return from their flying? They stayed behind                                 hanging by the thread of their surprise                                       and by their women’s hair We will dance                                           in the wreckage drink the coffee our dead left brewing                             we will open our tombs to windows for the sea                            in order for the sea to remain                               besieged Right here                                                 right here a corpse shook its trunk                         in the earth a corpse snapped God’s ropes                                               houses gathered then hid what’s easy to interpret                          of   people’s speech Which mourners ebbed                         and turned the sea to tombstones for our dead which poem                      was said and revived us? And that huge rose of ours                    our only bewilderment our offense                                                on earth our balcony on the kingdom of   heaven                    the grandfather’s house a hand that gestures                               farewell in the roar of   the massacre                   a white hand like old time a free hand like death                             after death Tell my love                                              space has been plucked tell her to sleep                                        on disaffection’s stone 2 Two raids three raids                             a whole morning a year of   long                                           bombardment over your going Did you forget                                          a newspaper of   palm fronds a time of   white dawn                             some hay from last season’s siege a brief greeting                                        like a mumbling on mornings                                            of   slow advance a suitcase a rug a palm                          with which you touched the evening of shelling                                                 into a meaning for a people                                              kind and assured and silent? Whenever glass shook                           you would shriek kid                                                              I pluck your death’s anemone                           and eat it Each land                                                  has its people each time                                                  has its folks and time for a while now                                        has been standing on our throats As if   we don’t love                                  or hate as if we’ve seen the land only as a bracelet                                    a house a dress a poem left filled with those who were killed                   without war 3 Memory shrinks                                      until it fits in a fist memory shrinks                                      without forgetting a boy in a farm                                         a chicken on a roof a dot on the planet                                  mysterious and intuitive like parents or a tree for a hat                                     with prairies for a dictionary                                         and days like sleeves short in summer                                      cotton in winter they resist when squeezed                     between our knees A not so First World                               rains on a calm boy torn apart                                                  like a tattered tent The lily of words                                      enters his heart takes a wedding by the horns                                              a well-trained bulbul by the scandalous                                    fruit rush of the river His return                                                 will be washed shrouded a field’s first flower                                 guarded by dirt Coffee coffee                                            for the beautiful one whose heart’s                                           a tambourine this morning while war                                                  shouts cold on slopes 4 In the saddles                                          grass grows warmth matures                                     in oleander the river pours                                        in your absence everything                                                will happen I exchanged                                             half of my books to sit near you flung my hand                                         so that it may see you then retrieved it                                      to touch what it saw We slept like sponges                            near the river butterflies descended from the ribs of shadow                        then left behind a mirror pitched                                     like a house of   jinn 5 It’ll be difficult                                          that you go before you choose a grave                      fit for sleep It’ll be difficult                                         that you die before you choose a grave                     fit for running for flood swimming                                for dense reeds by irrigation channels for bird snares                                         for the lettuce garden in the backyard for old dry thatch                                    on mud roofs for jujube shrubs                                     for climbing on trucks and holding on to vegetable boxes                                   for the diffusion of secrets loading and unloading                           in the big market A grave fit for you                                    to see Jericho light up through the windows                              as a neon garden the refugee camps                                    by the marshes touch A grave fit for you                                    to see Jericho’s convent toss grass liquor our way                                fir for some arches where oleander wilts                               near Bedouin tents And their watchdogs                               will dig and dig and dig and dig                                        and you won’t come 6 And the mules                                           in the junkyards does anyone feed                                      their loneliness when they cry? Or has anyone quenched                        their oneness or washed their dead necks                                       or visited them to remember how they blackened                                          in their sleep? The mules the movie                               extras who fold their torsos in the packed air                                       as lineage floats on light                                            an icon of wondrous dust                                     and riddles 7 And our neighbor                                    the one whose voice fenced us with reeds                               all day and all night She would forget                                      her rings in our hands two boys                                                    who used to dance for her