Hatif Janabi
Savage Continents
In these forests in their embroidered dresses
or black bones
someone knows how they begin and end
someone knows how to move without stumbling
in search of the soul’s guiding flame
someone who weeps genuinely
and someone who pretends to weep
someone who cries
O fire O gilded wedding
be my flag and draw my steps
A darkness
has shamelessly crowned himself a king
In these swamps
I saw them like worms enter
How they knelt to him how they twirled around him
I left my colt
unbridled
mad galloping in the prairie
someone was crying: O prairie prairieee!
nothing except an echo
I saw the colt of the Euphrates
crazed galloping in the prairie
I followed her
and my cape ballooned
with wind and dust
and when I asked them for the way
my cape filled with grass and stones
and when I told them let us go
my cape ripped to pieces and I cried O prairie
cinders and dust are my clothes
I hung my heart on an olive tree
and in the Baghdad of my allegiance
and the Arab peninsula of my mind
tossing and turning like a holy verse
crippling the traitor’s hand
No color here blackness is white and whiteness black
These cogwheels are our gold
and the singer’s nectar
The wailers died
and everyone has taken to song
I followed them with black and white
with green and red with sound and echo
with a nation of women
naked and grieving
I said: let this be Sheba
Is there any word
Is there a word
Baghdad Baghdad
the hoopoe has burned
and all are like prey
in a race with the wind
I cried O prairie
my heart hangs from an olive tree
O prairieee!
I followed them with a nation of women naked
their hair ruffled and coarse
I cried these steel wheels are our gold
When we arrived
waters flowed red
and the roads were empty
except for smoke and burned skeletons
and no sign
because this is a day of doom
Flames are the only gold
I followed her with red and white
white and red sound and echo
and I saw my colt
wrapped in blood
mad galloping the prairie
I cried O prairie
nothing but an echo
O prairieee!
(Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)
Hatif Janabi
To Where?
1. Where steps are you taking this distance
with a spiral of my blood
and my mother’s coat
with my sister’s solitude and my father’s silence
and a friend’s collapse
Is it with the disillusion of date palms
my heart drops
or with a miracle to sweep pavements and to chase
demons with the fork in the road
2. I see in the smashing of mirrors
our childhood
her old breasts dangling her belly flapping
a helmet on her head
her hands
two blazing flames
3. Where are we heading hoof of thunder marble feet
spreading a blanket of hope
passing with our rock solid loneliness
4. I see what remains of my kin and of friends jewels
made of dust
I see that the candles
and the perfumes bottles are buried in silt
and that what we read of Laila’s love and the devotion
to the land
are a mythical dream
from a mutinous age
5. Where to my body muddied and raging in the prairie dust
haggard and worn without mercy or a vessel
to gather your extremes and to give you a field of quiet
like the fall of a broken wing
in the open palm of indecision
I say where to my body
6. I see myself beating at darkness
tossing my heart’s weeds
at a tamed lion
stretching my coat to cover
the shameful parts of poetry and poets
7. I saw a gang of grasshoppers
and another scaled and gray
waving for me to stop
commanding me Do not lose your Arab tongue
and when I stopped
I saw
that I was without country or guide
my blood spilled in corridors and in barbaric rooms
8. To the rhythm of a woodpecker
to the hissing of snakes
in these jammed roads we walk
I the bedouin and the flower of my soul
strolling gardens and alleyways
and in a second — my rose finds her kin —
and you my love where to now?
9. I see a scarlet dome
blazing with light
and I hear a low raspy voice
coming with the wind
none other than my love’s voice
I stroked my hair
and found a country and a double-edged axe wailing
I found vineyards a goblet and two beasts
sipping my blood
I said drink up
and pour the remains
on the bald head of this wretched age
with the blessings of god and the messengers
amen
(Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)
Sa’adi Youssef
For Jamal Juma’a
Finally. . .
if you sit on top of the earth’s sphere
happily dangling your feet, flayed from roving,
ready to write poems,
remember there is someone who wishes
to make a seat out of your head
and to dangle his scaly feet on your chest
in order to muffle the first wails of poetry
(Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)
