Trying Again to Stop Time
Page 3
become one.
57
A child
in Canada
was missing the mother tongue.
…
60
His third language
had no room for his memories.
61
My grandmother’s stories
always failed to put me to sleep.
62
The war,
faster than lightning,
sent me to Canada.
64
My feeling,
faster than ink,
landed on paper.
65
The roads
do not take you to places;
they take you inside many hearts.
…
69
I continued staring at the stars
until my head became their home.
…
73
The sun has yet to ask the earth,
“How much do you owe me?”
…
76
Tonight,
the sweetness of the scenery
leads to ecstasy.
…
79
Doubt
didn’t allow my prayer
to bring me certainty.
80
In the end,
what we give back to the earth
is the ultimate truth.
81
After the leaves are gone,
nature
zips up its trousers.
82
Wherever I am,
I feel out of place.
It’s not my fault—
it’s the wind’s.
83
Art and childhood
always ask the same question:
“When are you coming back?”
84
The wind,
having robbed the earth of its cover,
settled in a valley.
…
87
I lost you while praying;
I haven’t prayed since.
88
War
has made us refugees
in so many lands.
89
It was my memoir
that changed me.
…
93
Faster than a bird
flies my desire.
94
The shadow
and I
go for walks,
every evening,
together;
at night we share a bed.
…
96
Poetry
has taken me on many journeys—
always at night.
97
Exile
has helped my words create many a window.
98
To enter the mirror
we must all follow the same path.
99
Death
remains constant in all my dreams.
…
Beyond the Sky Is a Blue Window
Far, far away,
beyond the sky,
a blue window can be seen.
Someone
wearing a blue T-shirt
quickly comes to the window
and just as quickly disappears.
Nearby,
I see a blue wind
accompanied by a flock of birds—
all the trees welcome the birds
except a blue tree:
it likes neither the moon,
nor the birds.
Far, far away,
there is a blue mist;
there is also a woman wearing a blue dress.
On the highest rooftop,
a boy is flying a blue kite—
now I know what ails this one particular tree.
If God can hang his blue T-shirt
on a blue line,
so can you.
Now,
not very far from where I am,
I see a blue garden
where at any time you can visit with the birds.
Here,
the evening is blue;
the flowers reach the blue window.
It is very quiet here,
a great place to call home.
Maybe the person in the window
likes to come down
and go for a walk
every evening
wearing a blue T-shirt.
This is a garden
where you soon begin to smell like wheat,
where you soon find blue windows entering your heart.
A Woman Befriends Darkness
(Dedicated to a woman who lost her eyesight in the chemical attack on Halabja in 1988.)
The warplanes
robbed Halabja of wind.
The chemical attack
killed Omar Khawar
and the daffodils in his pocket.
The warplanes
poisoned drinking water
and ended the brief peace people had been enjoying.
The breeze
that carried pollen all the way to Sharazour
is no more.
The earth made sick in 1988
has been unable to leave its bed ever since.
Even now,
the teachers of Halabja have nightmares;
the pupils have forgotten how to play.
This particular woman has been blind since 1988:
ever since,
she has been unable to knit,
to milk her goat;
her sheep have been unable to walk.
For seventeen years now,
this woman has been unable to garden,
or to take a look at her daughter’s face.
She can’t even tell when the sun goes down by her tiny window,
or how grey her hair has become.
For seventeen years now,
darkness has been her sole companion,
for it is only darkness that she can see.
To Be Free and Lonely
Between the two seas,
a woman was holding a stick,
trying to frighten dreams away.
A house martin was bringing water
to her chicks.
Between the two seas,
my patience,
badly bent,
had to rely on a walking stick—
the exile’s gift.
Between the two seas,
my words are free,
but the sound of a peach falling
won’t wake me up—
unless it falls into my hands.
Here,
poetry is free,
loneliness is free,
but here
the shepherd’s sack
has no room for the sun.
Between the two seas,
a lantern was burning sadly,
while at the water’s edge,
a fisherman was trying to regain hope,
as my imagination was trying to hide
behind my mother’s bundle of clothes.
The woman continued
to chase dreams away.
There was plenty of snow,
even though it was sunny and warm
there was no one to be seen.
Here,
Everyone can express themselves freely,
but failure has only one father.
Here,
flowers have no smell.
Here,
freedom leads to boredom.
Here,
I have yet to see a horseman
in control of his animal.
Here,
I see no appreciation for black and white paintings.
Children show no interest in picking up abandoned eggs.
The beautiful,
who are always frightened,
are easy to hunt
and the clouds never stop looking for trouble.
I waited for this woman to arrive,
hoping that her fire
would put us back together again.
Even Autumn Had No Room
Thanks to globalization
the man drinks coffee in São Paulo
the night before he was in Tibet
on the way
he stopped in New Delhi
to buy incense
he lunched at a McDonald’s
somewhere in Michigan
by evening
he was drinking a beer in Frankfurt
and now he’s here
in Hawraman
eating walnuts under a walnut tree.
In Memory of a Person Swept By the Wind
In my memory,
plant a tree on every road you take.
In every city,
look for the nearest post office,
and send me a letter.
In my memory,
be gentle to the water you drink;
also, make sure that when the bodies of the dead
come home from exile,
they are properly sealed.
In my memory,
don’t let the victims of recent genocide be forgotten,
always prefer Hawler’s public library to its streets.
When you do go to our favourite teahouse,
remember to ask for an extra cup,
so that discussion can continue a bit longer.
A Terrible Morning
That morning,
the sun refused to come into my room,
the wind refused to visit my garden.
I left my coffee unfinished,
my cigarette too.
“At least,” I mused,
“My friend got my letter before he died.”
Ice-water vendors were nowhere to be found.
Colours became indistinguishable from one another.
Words stopped coming.
I remained indifferent to my teeth,
to my mother’s basil,
to my last dream.
That morning,
death was having the upper hand.
Too Late for Watching the Sunset
1
Death and I
went home,
sharing the same walking stick.
Dream followed us,
hoping to deceive us,
but we learned not to trust it.
Along the roadside,
kisses were growing wild,
but no pilgrims could be seen.
It was too late, anyway, for watching the sunset,
too late for the POWs’ return,
too late to start fighting again,
too late even for mass suicide.
That is why now
I’m with the dogs,
with death,
with war,
with hunger,
and with the cold.
2
The guerrillas lost one more battle;
life is in retreat.
The moon came
but only for a very short time.
The butterflies have become good friends with death—
too late for watching the sunset.
The Last Refuge
1
There,
in a corner,
light and darkness
had been eager to meet.
For a while,
the sky seemed too narrow for flying;
what we experienced by day
seemed unfamiliar by night.
Little by little,
our memories were deserting us.
As exiles,
we didn’t even dare to think of home.
There,
where the stars are,
life was returning home,
indifferent and morose.
There,
I left shame and sorrow behind.
That was a long time ago;
my father’s water can flipped;
he never got another chance to water the flowers.
That was the time
when we buried the promises we made to God,
when we gave imagination a space of its own,
when we returned to Sktan by moonlight,
when we buried our martyrs.
2
One evening,
we were in Awagird,
the sun fixing its remaining rays on a martyr’s grave.
Stuck in the desert were a group of wounded moons:
all women,
victims of Anfal.
The campaign turned the rain and the sky into strangers,
and the wind into an accomplice.
Spring too had turned its back on the victims.
God had lost control.
Non-intervention gave war the green light:
acting quickly,
it destroyed every dream the young had.
As we rushed to help,
bringing water from grandma’s well,
we saw the moon
descending barefoot
and turning itself into a tent
for the children.
3
My father then was still living;
he had a talent for drawing.
He wasn’t a city man;
he was a labourer without skills.
Every morning,
wearing a red cap,
he went looking for work.
The little money he made,
he spent on feeding his family.
One day,
he exchanged his cap for a blue one.
He had the blue cap on when he died.
4
Since 1988
all the apples die before they ripen,
the pomegranates shrivel in the dust.
That evening,
people in groups
were coming out of their cages,
but there was no water,
no horses.
The fortresses,
the masks,
the gigantic black rocks,
offered no protection.
5
I used to be able to understand dreams
and imagine a lot.
Now nature is too fast for me.
I have settled in a good-sized village,
but I can no longer carry my things to the rooftop.
I can, however, travel—
in a child’s car—
and if my flowers are taken ill,
I can get help.
But here is not home:
the pear tastes so different;
doves do not gather near schools.
6
Last night,
I was getting ready for a trip
with two of my constant companions:
wind and luck.
My kite was up in the sky,
leaving the birds behind
and promising new beginnings.
But opening new windows is no longer for me.
Even the ladybugs didn’t like to remain on my fingers;
they all flew away east,
towards my uncle’s home.
I remember long ago
poetry coming to me
wearing a shirt made of water,
and sandals decorated with pearls,
asking me to make myself more visible.
I remember saying,
“No, I prefer a place where I can hide,
where I can sleep in peace and quiet,
where I can write poetry
without any control over my imagination.”
Smart Poems II
1
Our conscience
has fallen asleep
on a chair.
2
The migrating birds spread their shadows above us,
but we only let them land in thorny fields.
3
There,
the rain always
reveals the sky’s secrets.
4
The spiders
were bu
ilding their webs
on half-ruined doors.
5
I have never allowed war,
otherwise known as growing up,
to spoil my childhood’s water bowl.
…
8
After we let the wind be the custodian of our past,
we made friends with stones;
that’s how we learned to be lazy.
9
The photos
in science books
stare at us—
blankly.
10
The birds
and
the hawks
changed the mood of the sky.
War
1
The war
ruined my morning,
threw my book into the sea,
and left me thinking about exile.
The war
forced me to end my evening game.
It left my imagination leafless
and landed me in the wilderness.
It even confused history.
2
The war
works like a lottery,
even though it is guided by ideology.
3
I have been behind locked doors
for a long, long time,
confused and irritated,
finding comfort
neither in hope nor in dreams.
4
It’s one war after another.
I am still hoping for that day to come
when in the evening I can put my weapon away
and sleep all night without worry.
Hello Exile
The women of my country
have become inseparable from the cemetery.
The keys were poisonous:
poison above,
poison below,
poison in the blood,
poison in the imagination.
We were small to begin with;
now we’ve become even smaller,
and more confused.
My country,
war has left you without gardens.
The young are jumping to their deaths.
The old are too old for walking sticks.
Your doors are always open,
but your windows are always shut.
There was a time when people grew wheat
built beautiful homes
went to the mountains
made music
organized festivals
and eliminated bad odours.
To exile,
we take with us
two eyes, one heart, and one soul.
When we return
we bring back thousands of eyes and thousands of hearts,
but we return with deeply troubled souls.
We plant trees in exile;
we socialize,
but only loneliness filters through our imagination.
Still, I must say hello to exile.
It was a divided nation:
too many wars,
too many tribes,
too many sects.
It was a divided land:
each day
losing a tree,