What Looked Like Oblivion
Written by: Ali Demaini
Translated by: Dr. Abdallah Altaiyeb
And last night,
The doves abounded on the mashrabiyas, the greenery of branches, the buses, the moaning wagons behind their white horses
The scent of carnation and condiment, the blonde’s burqa in Alnada souq,
And … a couple
The house was the closest to Makkah Gate
There, chants of youth unfolded to the sense
The beating of a teenager’s heart, enough to drown the distance
And a girl, thirsty at the city gate
The door embraced the door,
And the window was inadequate to etch the lovers’ litany against its ancient wood
No ney for me, to send its sound along the wind for our voices to cuddle
No moon, to cast its light on the rooftop, and catch a glimpse of her cheeks
No child, to innocently carry our letters
No mother, to night-chat with,
To know what fruit weighed on my pain
And what mysteries my heaven held
And last night,
To her blue blouse
To the flowery hands
And whatever notebooks in her bag
At the bus time, I would be waiting, by my window,
For her turns, glances,
And the flouncing of silk around her long braids,
And I would wend my way towards her gait, much like tracking the rain
And I am the one, missing the little details,
The delicacy of a blown kiss,
The meaning of a loose abaya, resting on the shoulders,
Her idle steps away from the eyes of the house
Called me, the glistening Levant in her eyes
Brought me near, a rising day in her face
I remember,
She was singing, when I surprised her morning with a whisper,
“Kifak Inta”
And I am the one, by the grouping of fire in my words
Hiding my tremor in a walk
Running towards my school
Embarrassed of looking daydreaming in the classroom,
When the teacher surprised me:
Did you read our Sheikh’s Ring of the Dove?
The words wailed beside my rhyme
I lit the lantern on the rooftop
My light was pale
Her light was a moon, beautifying the wall of the night,
And the city bathed in its visage
How much we looked like chaste lovers, O Sheikh, in amiability and practice,
In devoutness, and justice,
In painting a road that ran to the eyes of a Levant girl,
Bathed with the delicacy of her ancestors
Ibn Hazm used to shade me with his camise,
And winds,
And his sailing in love,
Leaning on its descriptions
We need to enduringly perish in the vats of love, my Sheikh, to reach the absolute limit of accomplishment,
To exchange the meanings on our palms,
To recall a memory we had baked in the oven,
But could not rise high enough for the birth of baby boys
The calendar considered her picture unfit for the time
The madness of our family could not accept her visage,
Nor could she ornament my ID card with her smile
And last night,
Time rested on the attributes of burning embers
My hands got used to pouring memories, at the time of loss,
In a goblet of oblivion
So I supped, through my affection, the mirage of shades of her yearning,
And her glances,
And the ringing of her heels in the night, making her bed on the rooftop,
Or hanging up her clothes on the clothesline,
And her voice, a hermit in the harshness of longing,
Glowing alone on the darkness of the walls
And I misted over in my pain by the details of the houses,
And the face of a lover, unfastening her eyelashes
To an eyeliner of dew,
And extending her hands to the sun’s branch,
Descending to the city gate
And I poured in my cup the fantasy of the lifetime,
Doused with mint and lemon
There, the vehicles fled their roads
The days stripped off their days,
And piled leisurely at the feet of the hours
And last night,
The place roared with her sparkling smile
The gravity of things fled their original names
Since then, the Levant dwelled in my language,
And there came the glamour of visions
And last night,
The doves abounded on the morning
I was in the saloon, drinking my coffee
A moan trickled down the ceiling from a song,
“Kifak Inta”
It was a women, texting me with her eyes
I touched what pulsed in my chest,
I thought it long died,
Or got bored of getting used to the monotony of the years
Dancing,
Then dancing,
Then bouncing towards her seat,
And asking
In silence, nearing its sixties,
Are you …
She moaned, Ah, are you …
I never forgot you my lady
But I knew my life, spent leaning on the pain of a poem
Would intercede for me,
Praying for you to be my memory on the route of poetry,
And my brazier,
And the wounds of the ney as it gets hugged by hands
O God!
What token saved you in the deluge?
She said…
I am a kingdom of two,
You, and him
I since, long strayed on the roads,
Possessed by what looked like oblivion
September 14, 2010
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Mashrabiya: is the Arabic word for a projecting oriel window enclosed with carved wood latticework located on the second storey of a building or higher.
Burqa: a face cover with eye openings, worn by Muslim women.
Makkah: is a city of western Saudi Arabia near the coast of the Red Sea. The birthplace of Muhammad, it is the holiest city of Islam and a pilgrimage site for all devout believers of the faith.
Levant: is the name for the countries along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean Sea including Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Abaya: A loose, usually black robe worn by Muslim women, especially in Arabic-speaking regions, covering the body from head to toe and often worn with a headscarf and veil.
Ibn Hazm: was a Muslim Andalusianphilosopher, litterateur, psychologist, historian, jurist and theologian born in Córdoba, present-day Spain, in 994. He produced a reported 400 works of which only 40 still survive, covering a range of topics such as Islamic jurisprudence, logic, history, ethics, comparative religion, and theology, as well as the The Ring of the Dove, on the art of love. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Hazm.
ما يشبه النسيان
للشاعر الكبير/علي الدميني
و" البارحة "
المزيد
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