WORLD POETS MAGAZINE

  Dark Dawn ①               for Jimmy Chee-Ying Lai   daybreak farther and farther way      as you smile      turn around vanish behind that door      wife sobbing ocean waves sobbing      time’s      anchor chain broken add 20 years to 78 years old      a weightless infinity   this is no final farewell      the deep pit of the years waits always for a live burial      a human sacrifice as neon-lit streets fill with ripples of betrayal and false witness your craggy back view      is carved into the seabed like a reef   back to the home of tribulation      like the road to work every day the word NO trampling an elegy’s last lingering syllable death      incomparably strange incomparably fami...

  blindness   Jesus Christ has never worn glasses So as to keep His sight Out of the void. To be able to shield his eyes From the sands of the wilderness; He has never worn glasses And hasn’t seen myself On my beckoning to him About my intention to follow him: To go after him into the mirrors of sleeping Yielding and amazed and redeemed Like one of his apprentices.   In my home, Jesus Christ has never stepped To ask for lodgings For a night at least; He has never got in For me to treat Him to a dinner And to hand in to him the chalice From which to drink his crucifixion to the lees.   Jesus Christ has never worn glasses Otherwise He might as well have seen, Had He worn – My home with prison-like walls, The Street of the poets Fortuneless, deserted, obscure… The Street of the poets With en-spined white thorns From his wreath; The street of the poets With acacia trees blossoming in winter even,   He might have seen (had he worn glasses) My friend’s dogs Which I us...

  The Secret Life Of Poems   Ι   All poems are orphans. They live in an asylum. Some days as kids, other days as elders. During nights they gather in the hall And reads one another.   I Ι   All poems are guilty Will never apologize. Some are condemned to oblivion. But memory is the most merciless judge.   ΙΙΙ   All poems hide a secret. A trap door in every verse, a hidden crypt a loose brick, or a rotten plank for the reader to slide and fall   Ι V   Most poems are afraid to die that’s why they keep falling in love but death never comes in an instant actually their beginning is preparing it.   V   When a poem falls in love it often becomes persistent. It repeats its lyrics, the same motion, the same caress as a tide or a girl-acrobat on the snow.   VI   Poems are stars. They keep sending their light long after they die.   VII   If while you roam about happen to see a poem that is an acquaintance of yours please d...

    He Doesn't Know   The wet bird has a story, Only Sulaiman and Ahmad realize it, When he reaches the sun, with his fingertips. The bird has a birth certificate, an ID card, and a passport. He prays, performs hajj, and barely reads. He deactivates the effect of sorcery with the amulets of feathers. He forgets his parents. He doesn't know if he was an orphan or whether they picked him up from the street   (Translated by Dr. Sara Hamid Hawass)     Don't Lie the Sun   I am not ambiguous, to the extent that a butterfly gets confused in understanding me, or to the extent that the sky doubts, the name of my soul. Only when I love, I grant myself, until I have nothing left but you. I open the box, until the sea runs out of words. So I throw two stones of doubt, and two arrows of the perfume of qualms. (Translated by Dr. Sara Hamid Hawass)     With Two Letters of his Name   On my last point, my ship got lost, and I don't want Noah to tell his ...

    Two Birds   I trail the slow-swerving arcs    traced by swifts and swallows,   by starlings and lapwings.    In this sharp pre-autumnal air,   their intricate filigree-weaves    map our world with birdsong.   I imagine I am a pair of these birds —    soaring across two hemispheres   in their own private skies, flying    unplanned routes, charting   the flow of foreign trade-winds.    Over the lakes, they see hovering   blue rollers and kingfishers, even    an iridescent gloss-metal starling   longing for her faraway consort —    a milk-white seagull on the Cape’s   winding shores, keeping time with    Capricorn’s sharp ebbs and eddies.   They do not conquer the skies,    they imbue them with richness —   these are not grand designs,    they’re simple everlasting patterns.   Even the l...

  A House Like a Ship   I live in a house like a ship           at times on land, at times on ocean. I will myself into existence           surrender, invite grace in. I heed the call of the siren.           On the phantom ship   I don’t know if I’m wave        or cloud, undine or seagull. Lashed by winds, I cling tight to the mast.        Few return from the journey.   I now wear the memory of nothingness          a piece of white sail wrapped like second skin.     (From “Life in Suspension”, Salmon Poetry)           Ouranoupolis Pantoum   A love song cast upon the vastness of the deep                            ...

  The Barbarians (Round Two)   It was not in vain that we awaited the barbarians, it was not in vain that we gathered in the city square. It was not in vain that our great ones put on their official robes and rehearsed their speeches for the event. It was not in vain that we smashed our temples and erected new ones to their gods; as proper we burnt our books that have nothing in them for people like that. As the prophesy foretold the barbarians came, and took the keys to the city from the king’s hand. But when they came they wore the garments of the land, and their customs were the customs of the state; and when they commanded us in our own tongue we no longer knew when the barbarians had come to us.   (Translated by Vivian Eden)       Orpheus Prayer   Death and yet more death, sand and more sand We have stood in the square hungry to be   and, like mountain shadows, covered the city with pictures of a waking sleep.   Was she there or wa...

  To sow the wind, to reap the storm                 For Jack Hirschman                                                                                   A forest with only one single tree, it stands in the middle   This is a poem that I wrote some years ago   Now I understand  what it is about: It is a poem about Jack Hirschman   And what does it mean? It says that a lonely tree    is longing, longing  for other trees, many trees   to fill up the sense of the word...

  The Bread of Letters   I   Who will blame the trees when they loose their leaves? who will accuse the sea of abandoning shells on the sand?   I, mother-woman, woman-mother with two breasts for pleasure and two breasts for maternity who give the milk of music tell stories explain games light up feelings and the grammar of thoughts I, woman of delight and tenderness virtuous and sinful mature and childlike with my mouth I feed the bread of letters consonants and vowels sentences, synonyms and comparisons.     Who will accuse me of making a gift of my body to love?     [ from “The Abduction” by Maram Al-Masri, Translated by Hélène Cardona]         II   The act of writing isn’t it a scandalous act in itself?   To write is learning to know our most intimate thoughts   Yes I am scandalous because I show my truth and my nakedness of woman   Yes I am scandalous because I scream my sorrow and my hope my desire...