Alif

You’re not beginning . . .
It’s an eternity, you know . . .
I mean, the ever-after, you know
No matter, then.
Raise your cavalry
But don’t set out for the horizon,
Or the sea . . . or the soil
lines for beginnings,
finish me off on a wire.
          You are not beginning now,
watch out . . .
                    anyone who begins is deceived

Ba

We haven’t yet finished the elegy for the century,
                    We haven’t explained blood,
                     flowing from poetry,
or a tear from prose,
and what of glories,
                    to see through them just ourselves,
and in ourselves, only us . . .
Do the dead epitomize the living?
Well, then . . . does captivity test the
wings a bird uses to
                   swoop down freely,
or does it discover significance far
                    from their twin meaning?

Ta

That’s a mirror,
           and this a woman,
the woman rises . . .
So let the mirror be shattered, and the ruler,
          and the secret between them
The woman rises . . .
          to see the before and the after
from the inside and the outside
we’ ve obscured the sky,
           and performed ablutions at dawn,
then prayed at its knee until noon
the sultans passed by without their dreams,
they were dragging coffins
we call thrones!
Do you really see? . . . we ask ourselves
and how is it they’ve triumphed?
Only defeats have been victorious

Kha

The beginning of wine is the shadow . . .
           And it is not content with the volcano,
               we’ve raked the languages of serenity,
               to raise a glass
the naked trees . . . our remains
for he who gathers enough
of the silence that extinguishes an ember
               we no longer grasp, we’ ve returned
               and raked letters
               whose eyes have forsaken sorrow,
for a glorious silence
                they have stabbed its isolations . . .
the silence indicts armies
and judges and turncoats . . . and titles . . .
It does not forget . . . a summons from your master’s resolutions,
                or from the binding of the threads that remind.

Thal

Oblivious to design, this tomorrow is baffled by intent
and the yesterday that moans
from our first humanity.
Rather, baffled by our first blood,
for this I search the night
for a new master
                     sowing wheat with his palms,
                     singing from our songs,
                     and quenching his thirst from our casks
                     and if fury remains, then an invasion is
                                         undertaken

Nun

A gift is my rib
And my spirit a brown horse
And memory my pavilion
For to whom do I leave my belongings?
And to whom do I entrust my desire
For a mirage that doesn’t betray its master
                    one day as the capitals
                    have betrayed their inhabitants

Yah

Has he finished . . . ?
No . . .
He does not know this deed,
and doesn’t accept its definitions,
it embarks within us
and if he arrives to shore,
he says: Apologize to it for me.
          Around me is a vaster blueness
          out of your dreams
          Imru al-Qays
                    was straying from it
                     and so, it strayed from him.
The poet has finished and as for the poetry . . .
We say no . . .
And we say: we’ll try.

March 7, 1992