Jorge Carrera Andrade

SUNDAY

.

Fruit seller church

seated at the corner of life:

crystal orange windows,

the sugar cane organ.

.

Angels: little chicks

of Mother Mary.

.

The blue-eyed bell

wanders off on bare feet

throughout the countryside

.

Sun clock:

angelic burro with its innocent sex;

wind, in Sunday best,

bringing news from the mountains.

.

Indian woman with loads of vegetables

embracing foreheads.

.

The sky rolls up its eyes

when it sees the church bell

run barefoot from the church.

Maria Del Carmen Paiva

SADNESS

.

It is sufficient.

It has already fainted--

that accidental word

that usually sketches itself out in farewells,

and that you bring since who knows when;

or perhaps

it came close one day

and started the bad habit of nurturing it.

.

Time wears out things,

and although you keep on under those separate stars

and the sun, with its overflowing wings of sulphur,

and you keep on living in spite of all this

and what has already happened.

You deserve the name that life gives you

with its unforeseen and unknown impulse.

Li-Young Lee

EATING TOGETHER

.

In the steamer is the trout

seasoned with slivers of ginger,

two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.

We shall eat it with rice for lunch,

brothers, sister, my mother who will

taste the sweetest meat of the head,

holding it between her fingers

deftly, the way my father did

weeks ago. Then he lay down

to sleep like a snow covered road,

winding through pines older than him,

without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

Tu Fu

ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT

.

Far off in Fu-chou she is watching the moonlights,

Watching it alone from the window of her chamber--

For our boy and girl, poor little babes,

Are too young to know where the Capital is.

Her cloudy hair is sweet with mist,

Her jade-white shoulder is cold in the moon.

...When shall we lie again, with no more tears,

Watching this bright light on our screen?

Shel Silverstein

BEAR IN THERE

.

There's a Polar Bear

In our Frigidaire--

He likes it cause it's cold in there.

With his seat in the meat

And his face in the fish

And his big hairy paws

In the buttery dish,

He's nibbling the noodles

He's munching the rice,

He's slurping the soda,

He's licking the ice.

And he lets out a roar.

If you open the door.

And it gives me a scare.

To know he's in there--

That Polary Bear

In our Frigiditydaire

Ojibwa

FIRE-FLY SONG

.

Flitting white-fire insects!

Wandering small-fire beasts!

Wave little stars about my bed!

Weave little stars into my sleep!

Come, little dancing white-fire bug,

Come, little flitting white-fire beast!

Light me with your white-flame magic,

Your little star-torch.

Octavio Paz

BETWEEN GOING AND STAYING THE DAY WAVERS

.

Between going and staying the day wavers,

in love with it's own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

.

All is visible and all is elusive,

all is near and can't be touched.

.

Paper, book , pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

.

The light turns the invisible wall

into the ghostly theater of reflections.

.

I find myself in a middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

.

The moment scatters. Motionless.

I stay and go: I an a pause.

Gary Snyder

FOR/FROM LEW

.

Lew Welch just turned up one day,

live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said.

"You didn't shoot yourself after all."

"Yes I did." he said,

and even then I felt the tingling down my back.

"Yes you did, too." I said - "I can feel it now."

"Yeah." he said,

"There's a basic fear between your world and

mine. I don't know why.

What I came to say was,

teach the children about the cycles.

The life cycles. All other cycles.

That's what it's all about, and it's all forgot"

Maria Del Carmen Paiva

LATER

.

After all have past;

from the initial rupture,

from the all-too-sad alterations

and from the initial abnegation

that reconciled me to the opposite

[of forgetfulness;

after that battle in which my belly burned

until they remained sculpted

in the image of my exhaustion

in the exuberant sky

of those days;

and later

from the declines in the nightfall

and from the proposals that rose up

to accept what I no longer can,

the brilliant dawn came

with vague contents

of naked occupations

with innumerable admirations

for the rest of the world and the things

that also deserve my attention,

although it was only like a faint

in the magical sphere

and, sleep walking, inhaled a bit of freshness.

Ruben Dario

TOWERS OF GOD! POETS!

.

Towers of God! Poets!

Lightning rods of Heaven

that resist the fierce storms

like solitary mountains,

like peaks in the wilderness!

breakwaters of eternight!

.

Magic hope foretells

the day when the traitorous siren

will die on her musical rock.

Hope! Let us still hope!

.

Still hope. The bestial element

consoles itself with its hatred

of blessed poetry, hurling

insults from race to race.

.

The rebellion from below

is against excellence .

The cannibal waits for his chunk of flesh

with red gums and sharpened teeth.

.

Towers, fasten a smile to your banner.

Confront this evil and suspicion

with a proud puff of the breeze

and the tranquility of the sea and sky -

Ahmed Barakat

A SMALL WORD

.

I am going to the market

Please wait till I come back

You can wash your clothes if you get bored

And if the door disturbs you

Take it off

And put anything in its place

Please don't leave your face inside the mirror

And then quit by the window

Don't commit suicide as is your habit

.

But

Wait

For me

Till

I come back

.

Morocco

Allen Ginsberg

AN EASTERN BALLAD

.

I speak of love that comes to mind:

The moon is faithful, although blind,

She moves in thought she cannot speak

Perfect care has made her bleak

.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,

The earth so dark, so long my sleep.

I have become another child.

I wake to see the earth go wild.

Spike Milligan

THE SOLDIERS AT LAURO

.

Young are our dead

Like babies they lie

The womgs they blest once

Not healed dry

And yet - too soon

Into each space

A cold earth falls

On a colder face.

Quite still they lie

These fresh-cut reeds

Clutched in earth

Like winter seeds

But they will not bloom

When called by spring

To burst with leaf

And blossoming

They sleep on

In silent dust

As crosses rot

And helmets rust.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

fragment: TO THE MOON

.

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth -

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

Juan Ramon Jimenez

"I PULLED ON THE REINS"

.

I pulled on the reins,

[I turned the horse

of the dawn,

I came into life, pale.

.

Oh how they looked at me,

the flowers of my dream,

insane,

lifting their arms to the moon!

Flavia Cosma

SUPPLIANT HANDS

.

Suppliant hands

Streched out for

Plates made of snow,

Wish for Peace, for Light,

For Mercy from above.

.

They won't be given,

These precious gifts;

Only a dull, ephemeral illusion,

Only the moon's aura,

[an untouchable globe

And a tear

Welling up many others.

Amparo Osorio

FOOTSTEPS ALSO DIE

.

The wind sculpts faces

and you who watch the grass

ignore now the traces

of all eternity.

.

Aside from you

there are no possible roots.

.

How to name you

without death growing?

Braulio Arenas

THE OBVIOUS SIGHT

.

A clearly interior woman

I saw her in her eyes

I hugged her around herself and kissed her on her lips

As far as her feet were concerned I took off her shoes

As far as my life is concerned she answers to it

As far as rightness was concerned the two of us were right

We possessed dream

We possessed pleasure and the value of its answer

For life

I will hold your youth in my arms for life

.

A fisherman was mending his nets in your eyes

Such a beautiful afternoon I am tearing my forehead apart for a dream

I am shaking off all notice of slavery with the help of my hands

A notion of reality which now lays claim to dream

.

That afternoon

All the afternoons will be saying that afternoon

All of love's kisses will be repeated in that kiss

Latent love made manifest in life

.

Little hand among all hands destined to serve as light for my destiny

Little dream you go from here to there like lightening rides the eyes of a storm

Little dream you take this little hand by the hand

The entire sun was not beyond the cherry for these lips

Therefore the swordsmen forests buried their scythes

In honour of Saint Pol Roux's daughter who's name is divine

Because even though so little time has lapsed a curious legend has enriched the sea

This solid sea

Without exit

Vicente Huidobros

NIGHT

.

You hear the night glide across the snow

.

The song fell down from the trees

And through the fog sounded voices

.

I lit my cigar at a glance

.

Every time I open my lips

I flood the void with clouds

.

In the harbour

The masts are full of nests.

.

And the wind

Groans at the birds wings

.

THE WAVES ROCK THE DEAD SHIP

.

Whistling on the shore I

Look at the star that glows between my fingers

Tao Chien

TO HARMONIZE WITH THE POEM OF MY FRIEND TAI

.

An empty boat glides on without oars,

Returning to the infinite.

At the year's start, I gaze here and there,

And before I know it, it is already midyear.

Under the southern window, nothing withers,

And the forest is beautiful and luxuriant.

Seasonal rains pour down from the sacred source,

And the colour of the dawn is attuned to the warm wind.

We who have come must go;

Man definitely has an end.

While we live each day, waiting for the end

And bending our backs in the fields,

We surely cannot injure the inner self!

Though we meet with change, transformation, danger.

I am neither despondent nor exultant.

If in daily affairs we hold our spirits high,

Then what is the need to seek the sacred mountain tops?

Pablo Neruda

BIRD

.

It was passed from one bird to another,

the whole gift of the day.

The day went from flute to flute,

went dressed in vegetation,

in flights which opened a tunnel

through the wind would pass

to where birds were breaking open

the dense blue air -

and there night came in.

.

When I returned from so many journeys

I stayed suspended and green

between sun and geography -

I saw how wings worked,

how perfumes were transmitted

by feathery telegraph,

and from above I saw the path.

the springs and the roof tiles,

the fishermen at their trades,

the trousers of the foam,

I saw it all from my green sky.

I had no more alphabet

than the swallows in their courses,

the tiny, shining water

of the small bird on fire

which dances out of the pollen.

Ernesto Trejo

AT DAWN

.

The spirit surges among branches.

The nervous laughter of blackbirds

traces a dagger over the day's flesh.

.

To an assembly of birds on a wire,

plums below fill with their dark milk

and the shadow of a small cloud sizzles.

.

Two stars still burn:

eyes about to go out:

another blind day.

Thich Nhat Hahn

DRINK YOUR TEA

.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves

-slowly, evenly, without

rushing toward the future;

Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

Alley on the Quiet

Laser tongued failing spirit flying out my rib cage

the trinket "bring up mindfulness with large icons"

you're floating the blood sea brain "L'Acadie hidden

in the desk, don't part the sea!!" alcohol made a promise

to cut you down. To drop in the end; the prickly oil

"bounce like no tomorrow, a contorting blast; Rub the Belly!!!"

Alvaro Marin

A SONG FOR JUAN RULFO

.

The silence of the future ruins

gently move to and fro in helplessness

in this place called earth

because it yet doesn't have a name

its inhabitants

have one eye on the moon of death

and the other on a burning sun

The voice

does not spring from the lips

it is the deep trance of silence

Silence is the name of this place

so-and-so is everybody's name

and stone or ash

the names we shall have in the void

.

there's geography with the foot prints of the absent

the cut-down trees lose their leaves

in some turn of eternity

and cover the streets of the century with dead leaves

Wind passes deaf and saying nothing

it is a murmur as imposing as midnight

but not everything begins or ends here

in this geography.

Pedro Garcia Cabrera

THE OPEN ENGAGEMENT

.

To the right of the voice of the statues dream

a river of birds flows by.

The river is a little girl and the bird a key.

And the key a field of wheat.

That opens a small snail of a hundred days.

This means the hills of broken men

Are made of cardboard, wood and green walnuts.

But don't touch that anguish; it's all from the Sunday

When they created the nests in which tomorrow the

[adulterous stones will brood.

It's from that fish looking through the sea's eye

At how war is the tenderness guarding the empty beds

And peace that blood with which feet spatter their chains.

Let's go now. Don't pierce the shadow I had four years ago,

For my fingers ache with hunger and my heart with rains.

Better for you to sleep, to go on walking.

I'll wait for you till the tigers, on the lake shore after the

[wine harvest,

Lying farmhands to the fields

And shoulders of someone on the deserted promises

[without water.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

The love I bear thee, finding words enough,

And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,

Between our faces, to cast light on each?-

I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach

My hand to hold my spirit so far off

From myself--me--that I bring thee proof

In words, of love hid in me out of reach.

Nay, let the silence of my womanhood

Commend my woman-love to thy belief, -

Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,

And rend the garment of my life, in brief,

By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,

Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

Hakuin

You no sooner attain the great void

Then body and mind are lost together.

Heaven and Hell -- a straw.

The Buddha relm- Pandemonian-- shambles.

Listen: a nightingale strains her voice serenading the snow.

Look: a tortoise wearing a sword climbs the lampstand.

Should you desire the great traquility,

Prepare to sweat white beads.

Yehuda Amichai

MY FATHER

.

The memory of my father is wrapped in

white paper, like sandwiches taken for a days work.

.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits

out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

.

and the rivers of his hands

overflowed with good deeds.

Juan Sanchez Pelaez

VI

.

Elena is earth seaweed

Ocean wave.

She exists because she owns the nostalgia

Of these elements,

But she knows it,

She dreams,

And trusts,

.

Standing on the rock and the coral of the abyss.

.

Actually, Elena

Knows the simple things,

Because before being a damsel

She was Siren and Ondina.

And before being

Siren and Ondina

She swam in the whirlwind, in the number, in the fire.

.

I must have fallen onto the trail, and recalled,

Oh delirious host;

Right there, where the afternoon and the dusk are appeased,

They separated me.

.

I had another love,

Pure like ecstasy,

Fragile like fantasy,

Absolute like my other love.

.

I heard a trumpet of fog in the desert

My falcons emerged from the foliage.

.

In all seasons

In autumn or in spring

Elena is earth seaweed

Ocean wave.

.

Venezuela

Tomas Transtromer

A PAGE OF THE NIGHT BOOK

.

I stepped ashore one May night

in the cool moonshine

where grass and flowers were grey

but the scent green.

.

I glided up the slope

in the colour-blind night

while white stones

signalled to the moon.

.

a period of time

a few minutes long

fifty-eight years wide.

.

And behind me

beyond the lead-shimmering waters

was the other shore

and those who ruled.

.

People with a future

instead of a face.

.

Sweden

Flavia Cosma

LEAVES OF A DIARY XXX

.

I fall into sleep as in another world,

Subterranean or extraterrestrial,

A world with foreign laws and customs,

With mysterious temples and hills.

.

Strange things are happening there

But they don't astonish us in the least.

On the streets we meet with unknown throngs,

Who we feel we have seen before

In our day-to-day life.

.

And out of the blue

The miracle should happen,

O, if we'd regain

The keys to the tall gates,

We'd keep them open between sleep and watchfulness,

We would understand everything, all at once,

The past,

And the future,

Wandering time and the vastness;

Leisurely and wise

We'd sate ourselves

On a tree of bitter, ripened fruit.

.

Romania

Raquel Chaves

LIFE OF RELATION

.

I am in relation to the wind.

That which brings me your voice.

.

I have a friendship with the rose.

.

It's bloom, its thorns come

from you.

I already knew the bird

that in the mornings

visits my window.

It has not arrived with you.

.

I was left carrying on through the rain.

It has brought water

like my eyes, looking at you.

Czeslaw Milosz

FORGET

.

Forget the suffering

You caused others.

Forget the suffering

others caused you.

The waters run and run

Springs sparkle and are done.

You walk the earth you are forgetting.

.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain

What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?

A childlike sun grows warm.

A grandson and a great-grandson are born.

You are led by the hand once again.

.

The names of the rivers remain with you

How endless those rivers seem!

Your fields lie fallow.

The city towers are not as they were.

You stand at the threshold mute.

Guillermo Juan Parra

EVIL STANZAS

.

No spirit seek rest here

-Steven Spender

.

I

Breath defines length of line

As does notebook shape/size

.

Yesterday afternoon hearing

Archie Shepp play

.

full breathe, rich-toned

saxophone chords

I think language can do

this too/

.

to make feeling evident

sound with evil stanzas

.

As one sufferer said:

unto us blessings are denied

.

Making some characteristic failure

our tautness - a trance

.

II

after Juan Sanchez Pelaez

.

If snow falls now

on a street without course

nor sign,

myriad shades inquire,

from the foyer,

if our entry is fleeting;

will it last or not.

And they point toward

the actual path,

always being attentive

or dressed in night cloth.

.

Thus,

from what north or south,

from what east or west,

these prompt shadows arrive

or amble

through fields

.

in stables and cottages,

no one knows

save through a dusk's thin beam,

when we can glimpse the absent

when our big hands

talking alone

open toward the other cold.

Jose Gorostiza

THE EDGE OF THE SEA

.

Sea of no water nor sand.

.

Simple sound of water and foam

neither water nor sand making the sea.

.

The discreet things kind and simple;

coming together at the edges,

.

The same as the desiring of a kiss,

sea of no water or sand.

.

The things I look for, dead;

lonely, desolate like a desert.

.

Sometimes welling up in tears

for it exists as sorrow.

Sea of no water nor sand.

Tomas Transtromer

OUTSKIRTS

.

Men in overalls the same colour as earth rise from a ditch.

It's a transitional place, a stalemate, neither country nor city.

Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,

but the clocks are against it.

Concrete piping scattered about laps at the light with cold tongues.

Auto-body shops occupy old barns.

Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.

And these sites keep on getting bigger

like the land bought with Judas' silver: "a potter's field for

burying strangers."

Raquel Chavez

NO ONE KNOWS

.

love-- I don't know

your word.

It could be

latitude outside-

space.

It gets to be

the lost hope.

Everything happens;

in my dream silence,

this worn out sphere,

and it brings us

to live fully.

Li Shang-yin

THE PATTERNED LUTE

.

Mere chance that the patterned lute has fifty strings.

String and fret, one by one, recall the blossoming years.

Chang-tzu dreams at sunrise that a butterfly lost its way.

Wang-ti bequeathed his spring passion to the night jar.

The moon is full on the vast sea, a tear on the pearl.

On Blue Mountain the sun warms, a smoke issues from the jade.

Did it wait, this mood, to mature with hind sight?

In a trance from the beginning, then as now.

Mandrake Ediciones

AT THE MERCY OF SLEEP

.

Burning sea

And all the coasts are ice

.

Turned off is the delirious fire

The reported name

And dreams

With torments of the day.

.

Burning sea

Canoe in a virtual representation

Behind his chest

Your mind is a terrible heart

.

His love is for the day

As a tiger in the street

With eyes of fire and damp

.

All costs are the ice

His head is the same ice

His love is fascinating and lucid

One more step and the love

Would be changed

In a terrible memory

Even pride in an oblivion

Which is what you hear

.

In full fire

Is a human being

A human gull

With its front intact

In mid air

Like a human being

.

Chili

Rainer Maria Rilke

BEFORE SUMMER RAIN

.

Suddenly from all the green around you,

something - you don't know what - has disappeared;

you feel it creeping closer to the window,

in total silence. From the nearby wood

.

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,

reminding you of someones St. Jerome:

so much solitude and passion come

from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

.

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide

away from us, cautiously, as though

they weren't supposed to hear what we were saying.

.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now:

the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long

childhood hours when you were so afraid.

Pedro Garcia Cabrera

THE OPEN ENGAGEMENT

.

To the right of the statue's dream

A river of birds flows by.

The river is a little girl and the bird a key.

And the key a field of wheat

That opens a slow snail of a hundred days.

This means the hills of broken men

Are made of cardboard, wood and green walnuts.

But don't touch that anguish; it's all from the Sunday

When they created the nests in which tomorrow the

[adulterous stones will brood.

It's from that fish looking through the sea's eye

At how war is the tenderness guarding the empty beds

And peace that blood with which feet spatter their chains.

Let's go now. Don't pierce the shadow I had four years ago,

Fore my fingers ache with hunger and my heart with rains.

Better for you to sleep, to go on walking.

I'll wait for you till the tigers, on the lake shore, after the

[wine harvest,

Lying farmhands to the fields

And shoulders of someone on the deserted promises

[without water.

Anna Akhmatova

UNDER HER DARK VEIL

.

Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.

"Why are you so pale today?"

"Because I made him drink of stinging grief

Until he got drunk on it.

How can I forget? He staggered out,

His mouth twisted in agony.

I ran down not touching the bannister

.

And caught up with him at the gate.

I cried.`A joke!

That's all it was, if you leave, I'll die`

He smiled calmly and grimly

And told me `Don't stand here in the wind`"

Sylvia Plath

AQUATIC NOCTURNE

.

Deep in liquid

turquoise slivers

of dilute light

.

quiver in thin streaks

of bright tinfoil

on mobile jet:

.

pale flounder

waver by

tilting silver:

.

in the shallows

agile minnows

flicker gilt:

.

grapeblue mussels

dilate lithe and

pliant valves:

.

dull lunar globes

of bulbous jellyfish

glow milk green:

.

eels twirl

in wily spirals

on elusive tails:

.

ardroir lobsters

amble darkly olive

on shrewd claws:

.

down where sound

comes blunt and wan

like the bronze tone

of a sunken gong.

Robert Hunter

THE ELEVEN

.

No time to tell how

This is the season of what

Now is the time of returning

With our thought jewels polished and gleaming

.

Now is the time past believing

The child has relinquished the reign

Now is the test of the boomerang

Tossed in the night of redeeming

.

Eight-sided whispering hallelujah hatrack

Seven faced marble eye transitory dream doll

Six proud walkers on jingle-bell rainbow

Five men writing in fingers of gold

Four men tracking the great white sperm whale

Three girls wait in a foreign dominion

Ride in the whale belly

Fade away in moonlight

Sink beneath the waters

To the coral sands below

Now is the time of returning

Roberto Bolano

SELFPORTRAIT AT TWENTY YEARS

.

I set off, I took up the march and never knew

where it might take me. I went full of fear

my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:

I think it was the icy wind of the dead.

I don't know. I set off, I thought it was a shame

to leave so soon, but at the same time

I heard that mysterious and convincing call.

You either listen or you don't, and I listened

and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,

born on the air and in the sea.

A sword and shield. And then,

despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek

against death's cheek.

And it was impossible to close my eyes and miss seeing

that strange spectacle, slow and strange,

though fixed in such a swift reality:

thousands of guys like me, baby-faced

or bearded, but Latin American, all of us,

brushing cheeks with death.

Sargon Boulus

HOW EASTERN SINGING WAS BORN

.

PROPHET

.

I brace myself

Turn my face to flashes of lightning

Rave and wait until

The waves leave me

Chained to a rock

On an unknown coast

.

BOOK

.

Open the book of time

With trembling fingers and read

This is your life, pegged to time

With the short hair. Like a woman

It wants to disclose

Each and every secret

To you.

.

GOD

.

God wanted

To clear the world

Mankind is pre-ordained to wander

In dark, depressing alleys

For ever.

.

LUTE

.

It happened

That one of them gave

This lute and taught me to sing

With a cracked voice.

.

Iraq

Juan Pomponio

PETALS OF SAND

.

Old prophecies

they announce your skin.

I write without ink in the sky

and your name appears.

Small flowers that shine the night.

The tide arrives,

nocturnal music that unfolds.

Sounds without time.

In audacious waves

the rocks explode,

They pronounce your absence.

Dream without ink on the land;

petals of your smile fly,

they've gone to the sleep of the moon.

They leave your fragrance,

they draw your name in the sand.

Sargon Boulus

I CAME FROM THERE

.

in commemoration of Joesoef al-Haidari

.

The end of the year

A year of endings

The weather, crows, tightness of the chest

Because of heavy smoking. An ailment

(Loneliness

Unrest

A hidden pain)

Made me wander in desolate parts of town

Before nightfall

I came round the corner

Where my friend

The storyteller

Met me face to face

Something had taken the light from his eyes

My witty, old friend

He, himself

Something had twisted his features

From inside his white eyebrows

The black teeth

His (not for fun) smile looked grief-stricken

Crying

An undeveloped picture

A burnt picture

Going to pieces at the slightest breath

We met emerging from the gale

That started yesterday

Pounded signboards of bars and restaurants

Made telegraph wires

Wail in empty places

I shouted: Yousef

What happened to your face, Yousef?

What did they do to your eyes, Yousef?

He said: Please, don't ask

He said: It was devastating

He said: I came from there

He said: Not me. I am not myself

Not yourself

No, you are not yourself

They and the Gods of Hell

They and the Angel of Death in the door opening

Refugees on the roads

Children in coffins

Women wailing in open places

Your family is alright

They greet you from the grave

Baghdad is an ear of grain covered with locusts

I came from there

It was devastating

He said to me

He went away and disappeared

Everywhere

.

Iraq