“I don’t love you. I don’t hate you,”
The prisoner said to the interrogator. “My heart is full
of that which is of no concern to you. My heart is full of the aroma of sage.
My heart is innocent, radiant, brimming.
There is no time in the heart for tests. No.
I do not love you. Who are you that I may give my love to you?
Are you part of my being? Are you a coffee rendezvous?
Are you the wind of the flute, and a song, that I may love you?
I hate imprisonment. But I do not hate you.”
Thus a prisoner said to the investigator. “My feelings are not your concern.
My emotions are my own private night…
my night which moves from bed to bed free of rhyme
and of double meanings!
We sat far from our destinies, like birds
which build their nests in cracks in statues
or in chimneys, or in tents
erected on the prince’s path at the time of the hunt
On my ruins the shadows grow green
and the wolf sleeps on a hybernating poem,
dreaming, like me, and like a guardian angel,
that life is pure and free of label
Myths refuse to amend their patterns.
Perhaps they were struck by a crack in the hull;
perhaps their ships have been stranded on
a land without a people.
Thus the idealist was overcome by the realist.
But the ships will not change their mould.
Whenever an unpleasant reality crosses their path
they demolish it with a bulldozer.
The colour of their truth dictates the text: she is beautiful,
white, without blemish.
[to a semi-orientalist] Let’s say things are the way you think they are -
that I am stupid, stupid, stupid
and that I cannot play golf
or understand high technology
nor can fly a plane!
Is that why you have ransomed my life to create yours?
If you were another - if I were another
we would have been a couple of friends who confessed our need for folly
But the fool, like Shylock the merchant,
consists of heart, and bread, and two frightened eyes
Under siege, time becomes a ********
solidified eternally
Under siege, place becomes a time
abandoned by past and future
This low, high land
this holy harlot…
we do not pay much attention to the magic of these words
a cavity may become a vacuum in space
a contour in geography
The dead besiege me with every new day
and ask me, “Where were you? Give back
to the lexicon all the words
you offered me
and let the sleepers sleep without phantoms in their dreams!
The dead teach me the lesson: there is no aesthetic beyond freedom
The dead point out to me: why search beyond the horizon
for the eternal virgins? We loved life
on earth, between the fig and the pine trees
but we couldn’t find our way even there. We searched
until we gave life all we owned: the purple blood in our veins
The dead besiege me. “Do not walk in the funeral
if you did not know me. I seek no compliments
from man nor beast
The dead warn me. “Do not believe their rejoicing.
Listen instead to my dad as he looks at my photo crying.
“How did you take my place, son, and jump ahead of me?
I should have gone first! I should have gone first!”
The dead besiege me. “I have only changed my place of abode and my furnishings.
The deer now walk on my bedroom’s roof
and the moon warms the ceiling from the pain
thus putting an end to my pain
to put an end to my wailing.”
and the moon warms the ceiling
to put an end to my wailing.”
This siege will endure until we are truly persuaded
into choosing a harmless slavery, but
in total freedom!
To resist: that means to ensure the health
of heart and testicles, and that your ancient disease
is still alive and well in you
a disease called hope
in the remains of the dawn I walk outside of my own body
in the remains of the night I hear the footsteps of my own being
I raise my cup to those who drink with me
to an awakening to the beauty of the butterfly
in the long tunnel of this dark night
I raise my cup to those who drink with me
in the thick darkness of a night overflowing with crippled souls
I raise my cup to the apparition in my being
[to a reader] Don’t trust the poem
She is the absentee daughter. She is neither an intuition
nor a surmise, but a sense of disaster
If love is crippled, I will heal it
with exercise and humour
and with separating the singer from the song
My friends are ever preparing a party for me-
a farewell party, and a comfortable grave in the shadow of the oak
together with a marble witness from the tombstone of time
But I seem to be first in attending their funerals.
Who has died today?
The siege is transforming me from a singer
to a sixth string on a five string violin
The deceased, daughter of
the deceased, who is herself daughter of the deceased, who is the deceased’s sister
The deceased resister’s sister is related by marriage to the mother of the deceased, who is grandaughter of the deceased’s grandfather
and neighbour to the deceased’s uncle (etc. ..etc.)
No news worries the developed world,
for the time of barbarism has passed
and the victim is Joe Bloggs. Nobody knows his name,
and the tragedy, like the truth, is relative (etc. ..etc.)
Quiet, quiet, for the soldiers need
at this hour to listen to the songs
which the dead resisters had listened to, and have remained
like the smell of coffee, in their blood, fresh
Truce, truce. A time to test the teachings: can helicopters be turned into ploughshares?
We said to them: truce, truce, to examine intentions.
The flavour of peace may be absorbed by the soul.
Then we may compete for the love of life using poetic images.
They replied, “Don’t you know that peace begins with oneself,
if you wish to open the door to our citadel of truth?
So we said, “And then?”
Writing is a small ant which bites extinction.
Writing is a bloodless wound.
Our cups of coffee, and the birds, and the green trees
with the blue shade, and the sun leaping from wall
to wall like a doe
and the waters in the skies of infinite shapes, in what is left to us
of sky…and other matters the memory of which has been put on hold
prove that this morning is strong and beautiful
and that we are guests of evermore
I don’t love you. I don’t hate you
العرض العادي
