(Excerpts from a long poem)
Who are you scared of?
In a hurry, you kick the thresholds
with feet smaller than their steps.
You roll the stairs down towards you
to let the smell of sleep approach
and . . . steal away a body,
bleeding like a sparrow’s wing.
For whom does this evening read the fog on the windows
to see you crawled into yourself
ascending the vacuum with lazy fingers
sculpting the air with the difficulty of inhaling
to cure it from the boredom of your only hideaway.
For whom do you paint, splattered with the fire of words
before a sheet of paper, rising and falling
like an orphan butterfly that favours a rose
but wavers at diffusing the nectar of fire.
For whom do you lift your lids a little
when the passages to drowsiness doze off
at the despair of your door.
When you imagine that whispers,
as gluttonous as love, are eating you up.
When the damned numbness works hard
at holding your eyelids hostage.
When you wake up and close the night.
For whom does your hair flow down, asleep,
on two day-dreaming shoulders
like a lover
and they his lungs.
For whom do you walk and fear and laugh
and dream and cry and sink
and fade and break.
For whom are all these ambushes
that fear no one but you.
. . .
I ask you, woman who melts me,
Why are you glittering like a candle
relishing the sea of tears.
Why are you a small halo accompanying the
blessing of darkness
to glance at others like snakes wandering away
from the coals of their treachery heading towards
you.
Snakes pouring forth like the beads of a rosary
whose thread has been pulled out
and they stare in your sleep Is a long sleep
too much for you, or a little straying sleep
I don’t know
. . .
Ajar and heavy,
This wood engraved in the coffin of the door
You enter it uproots the wall it is chained to
You leave it melts your perfume for a loss it
has suffered
Hidden and twined at a time
A door no more
And it tells you more than it keeps from you
The guardian of your sleep protected with the
anxiety of a child
The collector of writing’s animosity when it becomes defiant
The worshipper of your cautious flow and your
eloquent prohibition
Afraid for you from the shock of its painful
closing
All anger is an illusion of the opponent’s
compassion
It’s the door, who else
The guard of your safety and the key shaking
hands with a mocking lock
The one giving your virgin room the phantoms of
the family
The coffin of your old day
The monitor of your loneliness.
And alone, like someone deceased
You don’t look back at sickened trees
at the entrances of your life
You don’t pay attention to thunder
pulling the air away from you
You don’t forgive leaves prolonging the shivers of
death
You don’t know your whereabouts.
Do I know?
A woman erases life’s indifference
with the stones of words that do not listen
to see the river of the soul widening
in slow waters that never miss what they see.
From whom are you scared?
Are you?
Translated by Nay Hannawi
from ‘Maladh al-Rouh’ (Refuge of the Soul), published by Dar al-Kunooz al-Adabiyya, Beirut, 1999