Translated by Issa J. Boullata

Reaching You

The air reaching you
Touched me earlier,
And the seat that is waiting
For you
Will be my lap.
How will they not think that my
Laugh
Is uproar in the backstage
Of my soul?

I place my shoes where your feet
Stepped,
I reached out to take your supposed
Necklace,
And place it between your blouse
And your velvet skin,
And my fingers try to catch up
With the air caressing you.
You have exposed me:
They found you in my laugh.

Crumbs

Along line of ants
Carries
This spreading fragrance
And is miserable on the way

While I stay standing in the doorway,
Between a goodbye and a welcome,
So long as the crumbs
Falling from the banquet table
Give appetite to talk.

Water Words

These do not consist of letters and
Sounds
For they fear the cold page
As soon as the drizzle of our laughter
Is strewn in the fine dust
And punctuation marks
Fall away from the sentences

Turning Letters

My kisses are words
And my torso a sentence
Emphasizing letters,
It is itself
And other then itself
At the same time,
Finding in them _
Oh, how few they are! _
Spaces for a dictionary.

Pharaoh

Words ripen in their quarries,
They fall like fruits
Heavily burdened.
As if they were a pharaoh,
With the toil of patient, exhausted
Workers,
They build what they extract
From the wild fancy of immortals.

My body, Rented

If I inhabited my body
As an owner, not a tenant,
My feet
Would fit
My shoes
Exactly
Like a finger in a ring.

But I am absent
Behind my wrinkles
And I wait for someone else
Top emerge from the mirror.
WE used To Have…

We used to have a land that
Shone radiantly
As soon a we touched its acres,

And we used to have a flag
With no less colours than those of
Others,

And, will with the stupidity of the happy,
We used to forget the colour of our
Homes.

Acacia

When my inkwell waters
The acacia in whose garden
It stands,
My leaves become moist;
And when my passion gnaws
On the apple in its midst,
It bursts into leaf again in my hand;

My face races with my face
Towards her face,
So I fly without getting there,
And I sit waiting for myself
Without feeling humiliated.

(Banipal, Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, London, No 28, spring 2007).