Well, I want you, at last, with no more shackles.On the table, I stroke the shields of silenceI once wore.I break a rule (now, don’t tell),spy on you and am amused (don’t say it),to see you…

To kiss youat the foot of every streetlampon every cornerof every cityin every languagewith kisses of melon, orange and rainand light of noon in my gazeas if nothing but mistletoeran in our blood . .…

even in our sleep there are cables / between us.

Waking up is a jump, a skydive from the dream.

On April 27th the Estonian government took down a statue of a Russian soldier in a small park next to the national library in the capital city of Tallinn. Local Russians, nearly a third of the 1.5 million…

Listen, child, to a wise old wolf: / in dance everything has its own meaning.

Fire? / No: light.

Quiet, you say. /     I hardly hear you.

I introduce myself to the world / mixed with my own shadows

I saw a shop / went in and bought / something I had forgotten / I already had.

“Ambar Past’s poetry is born out of the beauty of Chiapas.” —Elena Poniatowska

without knowing if you're alive or dead / it's all the same

My wife was the weather woman

Those who have nothing / have only had their blood to wash

The orchestra is playing Mood Indigo / that sadness of an unreal color

You are water. / You are afraid of and for the stones you will strike as you flow.

Purify your tongue and all you’ve seen / Gather your illuminated words onto snow white paper

After grasping the games and their rules / The fatigue of participation becomes less and less bearable.

Look: it happened here. A sense of surfeit grew / from the unfeeling past-

Fever in the knees / gold in the belly

In the seed of lilies / I buried you serenely

House under construction with dried branches, like spiders, in your scaffolding

O my city . . . Be a little larger / so that I may see my shadow free / on the sidewalks

She opens the window to the friendly morning / and tempts its birds

I miss the company of books / Their consolation through trouble and joy

The one whom you found by chance in the mirror,whom you found, by chance, in the mirrorin its dark side to be exactwas there, alone, thinking of youand trying to ingratiate himself with your isolationHe…

When a new poet comes, / the piano everywhere responds.

Baghdad / I will divest you of your morgue

She knew she had the threads counted,oriented from top to bottom, with precisionslanting.Some mutilated, already frayed, even to the edgestooped and sightless in her rocker my grandmother would say,tearing…

Threads that are worn through, idle affairs.The sky is an ungrateful fabric and the clouds make dartsin the cotton. That’s how I see it that’s how.It wrinkles a little more, the forehead,…

How long did I contemplate the line dividing / the branch from the water.

She presumes to know me. Or pretends. Very simple.

IWhat city and what nightsince it’s night in the citywhen a woman and a train-station argue overthe same half of a man who is leaving.He is young, handsomehe is leaving for a piece of white bread.She…

Here you are now sitting in a cafe in Sabratha

The cell. Whatever is there? / Listening a dreamy smile

Is startled of every shadow, / So let me in slowly.

Things fall apart, / Tide not turning.

How can I playWhen language has been eclipsed by imagination’s neediness?

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: La remontee des cendres (The Rising of the Ashes) is the title of a small text, written in French by the Paris-based Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun. It was published by Editions…

The driver peers into his rearview mirror. / You are not there.

One day I came back and he wasn't there.

We are rescued here the way dust is rescued / from the river.

I don't usually talk about my religion.

She grows old, my friend, outside the heart / in others' eyes.

Statements of small importance / spreading like phosphorous fire on dry grass

Life is full of unexplainable things. But, moreover, it is full of me. To be better heard, I repeat, ladies: it is full of me. From this you will deduce that I too am one of those unexplainable things,…

This poem by Iman Mersal juxtaposes a child's hopefulness with an adult's nostalgia.

I have no patience to contemplate the sea

What a pity you don't feel / How the trees bow to kiss you

I will make sure they are really there / in perfect happiness, / and that I am alone

Of course,the concrete pillars are not lacking in delicacy,and the columns of old houses are a nostalgia all their own.He added that he marks the weak pointand distributes its weight among the relatively…

One day wisdom will possess me / and I will not go to the party.

the cutting blade's coldness / gives me my body

as a silent way of killing- / but flashing glances / from eyes I barely glimpse

One day I will pass by/ the house that used to be my home.

My perfect friend, / why don't you leave now.

Flying into the field of cloudsWith the taste of sun and waterThere is no night out thereNight does not fall in the distanceA silver cage around my neckLike an unfaithful concubineI lay down and curled…

Ah dear flesh / Why do you linger here

The blood that knows to wait / Knows too to turn to stone

They smell of the earth when they cry out