From
Words from a young night
1
We are not an island,
except to whoever sees us from the sea.
2
Wine in half the cup,
the other half was not empty;
it was lost in ecstasy . . .
3
To write
is to breathe unused air.
4
They delighted in sleeping
because of the treasures it lay
between their eyes.
5
I write about love
the way a child draws his impressions of
adulthood.
6
An impossible dream
is kinder than a rampant delusion.
7
The curtain on the window
is an orderly more powerful
than his sultan.
8
A vessel between water and fire,
an enticement for flames.
9
He counted his friends to me
on the fingers of his hand.
Then I realised
that his hand had no fingers.
10
To rule = terror to force acceptance.
To dissent = terror to force resistance.
Both seek to grant prosperity to the people
under one power.
11
I am not free to accept.
I am free only to oppose.
12
I see the wind playing with the flag
of this place,
while people go without air.
The friends there
Friends
weave their new rags
in a morning with a missing sun.
Their bodies convulse, and their fingers are caught
in a fever of work.
They spin language with the excitement of magicians
and the confidence of artisans.
They offer wool to summer, and ice to winter.
Friends east of the water,
they work well in solitude.
I stand on the shore.
I watch their silhouettes outline the horizon.
I send them books in bottles that expunge my words,
and they are exceedingly gentle with them.
They run on a bridge
with flaming feet
and there
they climb, burdened with scrolls,
a bridge that praises geography and disparages history
and vigilantly watches against the written word.
They hold texts under their arms
and descend like goats decorating the road.
I embrace them.
They cross through terror.
Their memories are of blood,
and their fingers, fastened to glass shards,
are soiled with hacked hearts.
We crash in the midst of love and death
like waves churning salt and luring vessels.
Naked bodies of young men,
where a shirt is never woven for summer,
and no feast is prepared for winter.
The lonesome friends are there.
Translated by Khaled
Mattawa from the author's collections 'Qaber Qassim' (al-Kalima lil Bashr,
Bahrain, 1997) and 'Naqd al-Amal' (Dar al-Kunooz al-Adabiya, Beirut, 1998)
Reprinted from Banipal No 3.
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Qassim Haddad