A cloud
fell beside my heart. And what will happen
after all this massacre? Two clouds fell. No problem.
More people are dead on the battlefront. Let them queue up then,
so I can decorate them with some oblivion. Cities fell.
Cities will I build. The desert battalion has occupied more
strongholds. I will barricade myself in the remaining bastions. The anthem.
The anthem. Make way for the band of the blind.
Let the death wagon cross my mornings, let Hulagu’s armies pass
to the battlefront, let Nero go to Rome.
These are my friends.

In the nest of my heart
women drew close to each other.
No jealousy disturbs their sleep. They agreed
at last to share the same space
the same pain
and the same
void.

Once again,
losses are playing
in the hallways of my heart.

Good,
I will lock up my heart
and drown them in cigarette smoke
and glasses of pain.

I will stop
the beating in my heart
so that they turn, like this,
with no home, and no land.
I will uproot
my heart so as to uproot
all the anguish in my breast.

Let
then
the death wagon head alone to the battlefront.
I will not follow Khalil Hawi,
for on my table
is a glass I haven’t drunk from, around it
friends entertain themselves, late-night chat,
stories of great friendliness. Behind me is the void,
before me the mornings, on my shoulders the wind.

I will not
tie my days to the steps of Van Gogh
for it takes me an hour to swim in the River Seine, a day
to climb Mount Hermon, a year to reach the outskirts
of Beirut, two years to cross the towers of China.

It takes
life, the whole of life
for things to sweep through my hands

– the night with its intense darkness, the sun with its ferocity, waves
with their bafflement, the earth with its vastness, clouds with their anger,
the desert with its nomadism, the river with its forlornness.

It should,
then, show me more sympathy.
Its water should cover me
a little.

Life
life. I will tie it to my steps
like this, exactly as death ties my youth to itself.