Will Slog over This Road
I will slog over this endless road to its end.
Until my heart stops, I will slog over this endless, endless road
with nothing to lose but the dust, what has died in me, and a row of palms
pointing toward what vanishes. I will pass the row of palms.
The wound does not need its poet to paint the blood of death like a pomegranate!
On the roof of neighing, I will cut thirty openings for meaning
so that you may end one trail only so as to begin another.
Whether this earth comes to an end or not, we’ll slog over this endless road.
More tense than a bow. Our steps, be arrows. Where were we a moment ago?
Shall we join, in a while, the first arrow? The spinning wind whirled us.
So, what do you say?
I say: I will slog over this endless road to its end and my own.
Another Road in the Road
There is yet another road in the road, another chance for migration.
To cross over we will throw many roses in the river.
No widow wants to return to us, there we have to go, north of the neighing horses.
Have yet we forgotten something, both simple and worthy of our new ideas?
When you talk about yesterday, friend, I see my face reflected in the song of doves.
I touch the dove’s ring and hear flute-song in the abandoned fig tree.
My longing weeps for everything. My longing shoots back at me, to kill or be killed.
Yet there is another road in the road, and on and on. So where are the questions taking me?
I am from here, I am from there, yet am neither here nor there.
I will have to throw many roses before I reach a rose in Galilee.
Were It Up to Me to Begin Again
Were it up to me to begin again, I would make the same choice. Roses on the fence.
I would travel the same roads that might or might not lead to Cordoba.
I would lay my shadow down on two rocks, so that birds could nest on one of the boughs.
I would break open my shadow for the scent of almond to float in a cloud of dust
and grow tired on the slopes. Come closer, and listen.
Share my bread, drink my wine, don’t leave me alone like a tired willow.
I love lands not trod over by songs of migration, or become subject to passions of blood and desire.
I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold.
If I return, I will return to the same rose and follow the same steps.
But never to Cordoba.
On This Earth
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April’s hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman’s point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute’s sigh and the invaders’ fear of memories.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples’ applause for those who face death with a smile,
a tyrant’s fear of songs.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
I Belong There
I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.
Addresses for the Soul, outside This Place
I love to travel. . .
to a village that never hangs my last evening on its cypresses. I love the trees
that witnessed how two birds suffered at our hands, how we raised the stones.
Wouldn’t it be better if we raised our days
to grow slowly and embrace this greenness? I love the rainfall
on the women of distant meadows. I love the glittering water and the scent of stone.
Wouldn’t it be better if we defied our ages
and gazed much longer at the last sky before moonset?
Addresses for the soul, outside this place. I love to travel
to any wind . . . But I don’t love to arrive.
Earth Presses against Us
Earth is pressing against us, trapping us in the final passage.
To pass through, we pull off our limbs.
Earth is squeezing us. If only we were its wheat, we might die and yet live.
If only it were our mother so that she might temper us with mercy.
