Charbel Dagher : Eight poems
Translated by ; Basil Samara
A Word at the Tip of My Tongue
A word at the tip of my tongue
Knocks at my window,
AS I pretnd to be looking for it among my papers
I might find it suddenly in a train crowd,
Where it would just pass by gently
Like a fragrance
Or a fleeting glance…
It might shoulder me with its shoulder on the Departures platform
While I walk briskly towards the Arrivals’...
It might leave a rose at my door latch…
Upon my return I ask:
Whom have I forgotten? Who does not forget me?
Who writes me with invisible fingers?
Who meets me unawares?
Who outruns me to my lips?
A word on the tip of my tongue
Precedes me
Like a blind’s cane,
And welcomes me
When I open my door.
[At the Tip of My Tongue, pp. 53-54]
He Pats My Shoulder
The air closes in on me,
And my footsteps have the trembling of
Someone who is afraid of being arrested red-handed
1 have been shivering in my corner for so long that
He started sharing my table
And the nightly sheets.
My companion
On my chair
Pats my shoulder
When I show resentment.
Wherever I am
It is like weighing one’s foot
Before it becomes a footstep
The images used to come to me
spontaneously, or I would let them
Go to their positions without inspecting them.
A stranger does not have the authority of
A state, but he impects
Like a policeman at the border,
Or a lighthouse by the ocean:
Ships are guided by it
In the dark
[An Oriental Bed, pp. 94-95]
Surprise
My face follows me to where I can
Make out a face for him
So he can recite it
To listeners who are thrusting
Their fingers
Into the clamor of the senses,
So that I am not compelled ¬
As my habit ¬
To surprise my life
With letters
[An Oriental Bed, p. 102]
For C.D.
There is someone who
Imitates my gait,
Walks the line with me,
And as soon as he reaches my grave
He leaves me
And does not look back at the ringing
[The Poem for Whoever Desires It, p. 12]
From electronic gossip
Not every death is worthy of death
My death is by retail prices in a wholesale war,
My death is by wholesale prices in a retail war,
Dead according to those alive standing in the condolence line, to biography writers, to wreath buyers, and to spectator hunters in open air theatres,
Dead commensurate with the amount of life given to those who deal with it
Satellites explore a soldier’s single shoe after a desert storm,
While the covered dead bodies pile up or are dispersed every which way:
Nothings wrong if they were buried in mass graves,
Without the presence of their families,
Without TV or newspaper photos,
For the national flags are not appropriate as shrouds for them,
But only for others!
It is not sufficient that you die,
But where you die, and in whose company,
For the one who has died is someone they look for, and then they miss,
They make sure that his seat remains warm after his departure,
And that his life story has a lit oil candle:
The one who has died is a rash future governed by time past,
He does not wait for anyone, and no one plans to meet him,
He leaves deep engravings in antique friezes
He irons his tongue and clips his teeth,
As soon as he wakes up,
Hands and blazing eyes await him in the mirror,
And vast rows of spectators,
But, as soon as he steps onto the promenade,
He clears his throat,
Adjusts his tie,
And sneaks into a recorded videotape
An altar for the martyr in the size of a camera
If not aligned with its screen hell adjust the headband around his forehead,
The martyr speaks on my behalf
About what happens before it happens,
And I follow him on the news broadcast;
The martyr beats me to the poem,
Receives condolences
On my death,
I, the martyr Charbel Dagher after the end of the sentence,
Not before the expiry of the interest in it
She buys the TV guide week after week
But does not change her clothes day after day,
She shut her window tight against the noises of the persistent crowds,
And made reservations for predetermined appointments
She would receive in Hawaii and bid farewell in Venice
Those people who spent dollars generously on whom they met on their travels on the highways of the air
The screen is her neighbor, and records stories for her when she is away,
And her lit window to guarantee her safe nightly arrival to the Salon
She kept it lit on the morning of September 11,
She went out, but did not return
Her news arrived before her to her destination,
But the television did not record her picture.
[Parsing a Form, pp. 19-59]
I, the Other
The person walking beside me
Does not talk to me,
He does not return my morning greeting,
He buys the same newspaper,
Tears it up in my face,
And walks to the café
To wait for me
[An Oriental Bed, p. 91]
From
Electronic gossip
Not every death is worthy of death
Dead at retail prices in a wholesale war,
Dead at wholesale prices in a retail war,
Dead according to those alive standing in the condolence line, to biography writers, to wreath buyers, and to audience gatherers in open air theatres,
Dead commensurate with the amount of life given to those who spend it
Satellites explore a soldier’s single shoe after a desert storm,
While the covered dead bodies pile up or disperse every which way:
No problem if they were buried in mass graves,
Without the presence of their families,
Without TV or newspaper photos,
For, the national flags are not appropriate as coffins for them,
But only for others!
It is not sufficient that you die,
But where do you die, and in whose company,
For, the dead is someone they look for, and then they miss,
They make sure that his seat remains warm after his departure,
And that his life story has a lit oil candle:
The dead is a hurried future governed by the past,
The dead does not wait for anyone, and does not plan to meet anyone,
The dead has deep facial marks in antique frames
He irons his tongue and protects his teeth,
As soon as he wakes up,
Hands and flaming eyes await him in the mirror,
And rows of seats filled by the audience,
But, as soon as he steps onto the main street,
He clears his throat,
Adjusts his necktie,
And slips into a recorded videotape
An altar for the martyr in the size of a camera
If he not aligned with its screen hell adjust the headband around his forehead,
The martyr speaks on my behalf
About what happened before it happens,
And I follow him on the news broadcast;
The martyr beats me to the poem,
Receives condolences
On my death,
I, the martyr Charbel Dagher after the sentence ends,
Not before the interest in the interest in it expires
She buys the TV guide week after week
But does not change her clothes day after day,
She shut her window tight against the noise of the persistent crowds,
And made reservations for predetermined appointments
She would receive in Hawaii and see of in Venice
Those who spent dollars extravagantly on whoever they ran into when they happened to [pss over the promenades of air
The screen is her neighbor, and records stories for her when she is away,
Her lit window is to guarantee her safe nightly arrival to the Salon
She kept it lit on the morning of September 11,
She went out, but did not return
Her news of hrt death arrived before her at her destination,
While the television did not record her picture.
I, the Other
The person walking next to me
Does not talk to me,
Does not return my morning greeting,
He buys the same newspaper,
Tears it up in my face,
Than walks away to the café
To wait for me
[An Oriental Bed, p. 91]
Stay Alert
Do not surrender to the dust of footsteps;
Stay alert,
Or else youll get hit by a sudden branch, which would hurt forcing you to resume
Your walking, not knowing where to start, except that
You d have lost that taut pleasure of being in motion:
Desire is strongest, on both flexed ends,
Of a bow, when the string is drawn…
This road is no longer a road as long as steps are drawn to it
[The Poem for Whoever Desires It, p. 16]
A glistening look
Her blue, she who leans over her window,
Is the inkwell for the one who holds his quill
And licks away concealed shapes,
A flower is what appears to him,
A fervent anticipation
Of a glistening look,
Charbel Dagher is a professor of Arabic literature at the university of Balamand, He has published more than forty books in Arabic and French, among which novels, poetry and books in the Islamic and modern art. He is considered an innovator of prose poetry and his poems have been translated into several languages, including English, german, italian and Japanese,
(Banipal 53, summer 2015, London, U K),
