When the sun opens its bedchamber
for the evening,
the sea gulls appear woven as a veil
over the face of the sky.

THE STATE OF OLD AGE

Whenever I say:
I have aged,
and the wounds have worn me out,
a tempest shakes me,
and the morning
attires me
in its youthful countenance.

A SONG TO THE WOUND

Ahmad, Maryam, Karim-
Death has landed in their courtyard,
hunting their dreams,
hunting the last things
born in the waters of their dreams.
But I, the narrator,
will relate to you what I have seen
on the other bank:
Every day they sing to the sun
to alight from its saddle
and come to repose in their shade.
The sun has fallen in love
with the arches of their eyelids,
fallen in love with their kuhl***,
with the colour of their henna.
And I see the sun-
It gathers all its grapes and pours them
into their wine barrels,
drop after drop .
And I say - I, the narrator:
Time weaves its steps from their dismembered bodies,
and paves their dismembered bodies as paths for their steps.
It is playfulness- a child, the dice of the winds.
And for them is that which impregnates
the trunk of the evening
with the sap of dawn.
And for them are these fields;
for them all this impregnation.

A SONG TO A PEASANT

A helmet?
Your claim is a lie.
This is the last of the oranges
which used to inhabit his grove.

THE BEGINNING OF NAMING

We named the olive trees 'Ali,
the street an opening to the sun,
the wind a passport,
and the road a bird.

TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE LOVER

1-

Her name was walking silently in the forests of letters.
The letters were arches and velvet-like animals,
an army fighting with tears and wings.
The air was kneeling down and the sky stretched out like hands.
Suddenly,
a strange plant leafed and the brook standing behind the forests
drew closer.
I saw fruits embracing like links of a chain;
flowers began to dance,
forgetting their feet and fibres,
shielding themselves with shrouds.
The arms, the muscles, the faces were the remains
of a feast for a day which had ailed and died,
and for guests whose names had not yet been born...

(I saw a procession of white horses mounting the sky, so I ran shouting: A snake is chasing me. And I repeated, screaming: A snake as long as a palm tree...

But the procession of horses didn't hear me and hurried away .
I said: I'll take a horse and escape.
I implored, but only to realize that I had no voice.
I tied my waist with the wind of trepidation and splintered in the air.

A sheikh with a pleasant fragrance appeared in my way.
- Can you protect me from this snake?
- I am weak ; it is stronger than I am. Along the way there is somebody who will protect you. Hurry .
I hurried until I reached the air .
The sky stared at me appearing and disappearing in the darkness,
the wind pronounced me and repeated me.
I heard the shiekh's voice from afar:
Ahead of you is a mountain full of the gifts of life. There you have a gift that will support you and protect you.
And I heard a voice rising out of the mountain:
Lift your veils and behold.
I turned and found the mountain full of windows;
the windows were mothers and children.
In a state of shock, I looked . A baby girl was in tears, saying:
This is my father, pointing to the snake ; the snake slithered away.
A hand stretched towards me.
It pulled me and took me into a place the age of which I didn't know.
There was a bed waiting for me. At its end sat a ghost rising like a breast, wearing a buttock and a chest and whatever else.)

My body awakened and fell captive to the pores the eyeballs the navels and the second nature in which procreate various kinds of poppies and mandragora* and suchlike plants of masculinity and femininity.
And my skin began to prepare itself for the fall of another planet into its folds.

- 2 -

In all directions you grow;
you grow in the direction of the depths.
You unfold for me like a spring,
and like a tree you surrender.
And I
was entangled in the towers of dream,
drawing around them my forms,
inventing secrets with which to fill the holes of days.

Upon your limbs I carved the embers of my limbs .
Upon my lips and fingers I wrote you,
and I engraved you upon my forehead.
I varied the lettering and the spelling,
and multiplied the readings.

My sighs were clouds propping up the horizon,
a garment which I wove for you to wear,
dyed with the sun.
The night was a light
leading my body
in your direction.

In the folds of your dress I hid,
escorting you to school.

Our steps stole the bells of the threshold,
and in we sneaked .
In the classroom I sat to your left,
and slept between your eyelids;
but I saw you not.

In a journey that never reached us,
you were.
Your garments were the regions,
and the seasons
your road to me.

On tree trunks we read our name,
with stones we rolled.
The trees, like us, were voices,
and the soil was a fruit
under our glow.

We walked in the company of a cloud,
chatted to the houses,
daylight walking behind us,
draped in grass.
Then towards Qasyun you rose
like a cloud of incense,
and in your smoke I staggered,
intimate, obedient, imbued with your bashful flavour,

- 3 -

Liber, Libera, Phallus ...

A thread of dawn bitter on the eye wakes us.
Tighten the knot of the eyelids.
In our bodies light hoists its hills and banners,
and flames ripple pillow after pillow.
Tighten the knot of the eyelids.
Daylight announces the night - Wake up.

I penetrate the ship of my body to reach you,
I explore the tenebrous landscape on the map of sex,
and I advance.
I drape my corridors in signs and talismans ,
then burn for them the incense of my jungle - like hallucinations,
of tattoos and fire.
I see myself as a wave and see you as a shore.
Your back is half a continent,
and under your breasts
my four directions.

I branch out around you,
and between you and me I fall,
an eagle
with a thousand wings.
I hear your delirious limbs,
I hear the sigh of the waist
and the greetings of the hips.

The moment overcomes me.
I enter the desert of trepidation, calling your name,
descending into the fathomless layers
in the presence of the narrowest world.
I witness tears and fire on a single plate,
witness the city of marvels.
And my states become intoxicated.
Thus speaks the body the lord.

O, woman inscribed by the lover's pen,
saunter wherever you desire amongst my limbs.
Halt and speak.
My body splits open,
and my treasures cascade .

Dislodge my fixed stars,
and lie beneath and over my clouds,
in the depths of streams
and on the peaks of mountains.

The days of the year assemble round me.
I transform them into abodes and beds,
and enter
each abode and every bed.
I gather the sun and the moon,
and the hour of love rises.
I immerse myself in a river which flows
out of you
to another Earth.
I hear words
turning into gardens and stones, wave after wave,
and flowers with divine thorns.
Thus speaks the body the lord.

High high high.

Be my face which rises out of every face,
a sun that rises not in the East,
and sets not in the West.
And do not awaken,
nor fall asleep...

I ascend to you
while descending to you,
gathering the extremes of my anguish and its distant regions,
attacking you with my heart,
and telling the hissing temptations to take me
to roam over each cell in your body.

You erect your bed,
or make the earth your mattress .
We plant the trees of the body,
and take our voices as quilts,
until it is time for revelation.

The body has been estranged,
touched by the magic of transformation.
The ache of the joints, the pulsing of the limbs,
the architecture of the muscles,
and the grandeur of action,
protracting contracting expanding,
the slopes of the body its rises planes expanses
and meanderings,
the land of the loins is bedecked with stars,
and its halves with volcanoes of white embers,
with waterfalls of wildness and desire.

Then we seek the shade of the pavilion
of the pelvis,
where the planet of sex spins.
The metamorphosis is now complete:
Your breasts are day and night.
Thus speaks the body the lord.

- 4 -

Liber, Libera, Phallus ..

Love is upon the sea,
the sea upon the back of the wind.
And the entire world
is a letter in the book of the body.

- What have you seen?
- A knight saying: Never have you desired anything without it being.
I took grains of wheat and sowed them. I said unto them: Grow,
and they grew. I said unto them: Be harvested, and they were harvested. I said unto them: Be husked, and they were husked . I said unto them: Be ground, and they were ground. And I said unto them: Be baked, and baked they were.
When I saw that I never desire anything without it being,
I was filled with awe and awoke . I found you on my pillow.
And you, what have you seen ?
- A wind full of comets of fire; behind the comets were children driving them.
- What else?
- A hill moving and splitting open to let a pregnant deer emerge.
- What else have you seen ?
- We were together in a boat; you were pregnant. While we embraced tenderly, the boat capsized and broke up . We escaped over one of its boards; and on the board you had your child.
And you implored: I am thirsty. I said: From where when we are in this state? I raised my eyes to the sky ; there was a ghost extending a jug to me ; I grabbed it, gave you a drink and drank; the water was more luscious than honey. Then I saw the ghost vanish, saying: I left my love to his love
and he gave me a home in the air.

Ambitious like the horizon is my body,
and palm trees are my limbs.
You fruit in me,
and under your breasts I am harvested.
I wither, and you are my basil and water.
Each fruit is a wound and a path to you.
I cross you and you are my abode.
I dwell in you and you are my waves.
A sea is your body, and each wave is a sail.
A spring is your body,
and each fold is a dove singing my name.
You squeeze my limbs into your body.
In your body I move in waves of intoxication,

I am gripped by fear, yet I dare.
To the forests I plead for help,
to the wilderness,
to the primordial clay,

I get torn and splinter, descending into the deepest regions of your body,
filled by beings which blaze die out inhale and exhale.
An abyss of your body snatches me.

I ascend,
gathering my heart which is scattered in my ends.
I raise my eyes to you as you call me :
You were so slow, my love, you were so slow.
My body is a tent, and you its poles and ropes.
You were so slow, my love,
you were so slow.

A child beneath my garments shouts: O, Love, O, Love .
The trees are his lanterns and the air his tower and bells.
His passion flows in the feathers of the wind,
soaring where there are no boundaries,
in the direction of the sky the sky the sky.

Remember
our house standing alone in the fabric of fig and olive groves,
the brook huddled around it, as small as the pupil of the eye?
Remember?
The woods fluttered like butterflies,
and the night was the beginning of the Earth...?

The night...
Deepen the vent of the breast, become the wilderness
and cuddle me.
Then I'll have a history of thunder,
plains which wandering ploughs,
an island of the ink pots of the body,
I string its ends to my death,
and dwell in the beginnings of the letters.

The night...
Amongst the down of your body I pitch my tents.
I quiver,
prepare the provisions for the voyage,
each quiver is a homeland,
and the roads are luminous like my depths.
We bend, tense, meet face to face,
We parallel and interlace,
(I a vestment for you
and you a vestment for me).
The muscles ferment,
the skin acquires the colour of lilac
and the taste of the sea,
where the fathomless waves beckon
and our limbs set sail.
We hear the moaning of the mysterious depths,
and glimpse our veins enshrouding themselves with death.
We arch and stumble.
O, the water the redeemer love,
why the tiredness, why the repose?
O, texture
more tightly woven than water,
O, love.

Weddings weddings.
Not the sun illuminates us, but another magic.

Weddings weddings
which open our faces onto the cities of magic,
and open our frontiers to sex.
The dream is a planet
orbiting under our eyelashes.
O, marvels of the other love in love.
O, dimension which commences
beyond all dimensions.

O, woman,
as I created you, you desired me;
as I wanted you, you flowed into me.
You enter into my rhythm,
you anoint your breasts with my words,
and sink to the fathomless depth of love.
Where I raise my city and live,
we live, and from the depth of things
full of rancour, we proclaim love.

We dream that our eyelashes are inkpots,
and daylight an open book.
Farther than the dream we walked,
farther than the heart we loved.
We said to the one who names:
Don't name us,
and we awakened.
You were a lake,
and I a stem of mandragora
filled by the Earth.
Along your shores I moored,
and your waist was my anchorage.

What tide awaits us?
My breath is as closed as an oyster,
and you are my pearls and my fisherman.
Your face carries my sail,
and between our love and the sky,
the space is too narrow.
I unveil the other face of daylight,
and glimpse the other dimension of night.
At the sea I scream: O, rampant sea,
break like a reed,
and at thunder: Listen.
I ask:
Is love alone a place which death does not reach?
Can the mortal learn love?
And what do I name you, O, death?

Between myself and me there is a distance
where love lurks, casting its eye on me,
where death lurks, casting its eye on me .
And the body is my baptism.

Out of the depths of mortal being,
I proclaim love.

Liber, Libera, Phallus ...

- How did you marry me?
- I was wild, wandering,, with no peaceful place to repose.
I fell asleep then rose
to find a woman over my pillow.
I remembered Eve and Adam's rib,
and I knew you were my wife.

That day I dreamt of clouds
lifting, for me, like a veil;
then a voice commanded me:
'Choose whatever you desire.'
I chose a black cloud,
and watered you with its sap.
And I said:
' O, body, contract, unfold, appear and disappear.'
And the body contracted, unfolded, appeared and disappeared.
I saw my clothes slide off my body,
and darkness descend over me;
and the world emerged out of me,
shouting as sharp as a bayonet:
'Descend deep, deep into the darkness.'
And I fell into the darkness.
The stones were rays of light, the sands were flowing waters;
and I found you,
and saw myself.
I said:
'I shall stay in the darkness; I won't come out.'
But
the sun arrived and smuggled me.
And I saw everything entering the sun...
But how did you marry me?
- My body was a wind
blowing in your direction,
wearing the colours of the Earth,
and blowing in your direction.

- 5 -

Yesterday,
I closed my door with the first star.
I drew the lonely curtain and slept with her letters.
And now the pillow is wet,
and pregnant are the words.

I dream-
I wash the Earth and make it a mirror,
and around it I erect a wall of clouds, a fence of fire,
and build a dome of tears
mixed by my own hands.

- What have you prepared for me as a last present?
- My shirt which covered us the day we were wedded,
and I'll descend with you to the grave
to alleviate your pain at the death of love.
I'll mix you with my water
and offer you as a drink to death.
I'll give you my kingdom:
the grave and the freedom of death.

Once, I saw her as a rising sea.
I adored the foam and vowed that the waves would be my neighbours,
in their salt I would stroll with my worries,
while they read to me their echoes.

(You see what lies beneath the skin. Do you, then, want to reveal the continent of the depths? Let somebody else discover the continent of the summits.)

THE DEPTHS

(We were a large crowd, men and women, walking
along the women's road.
Suddenly, a leopard crossed our path.
I said to a man next to me:
Isn't there a knight here to drive this leopard away?
-I do not know, but I know a woman who will.
- Where is she?
He walked; I walked with him to a nearby howdah;
and he called:
Nada; alight and drive this leopard away.
And she replied:
Would your heart be at ease if he saw me,
he being a male and I a female?
Say unto him: ' Nada conveys her greetings
and commands you to clear the way.'

The leopard bowed his head, and vanished.)

THE DEPTHS

O, friends, why do you desire my hasty death?
Leave me.
I hear bells in my memory,
and hear in the bells another Earth.
I need another Earth to add new words to my language.
I need
death.

Leave me.
A shell invited me and read to me her verses.
I also read pages of a book she was composing,
which she called The Room of a Shell.
As she read, she revealed her secrets:

I saw an elephant emerging from the horn of a snail.
I saw camels and horses inside oysters
the size of butterflies.
In front of my eyes a creature was born,
half stone, half animal. She pointed to it and whispered:
This is the woman.
Then she said to me in a hushed voice:
Put your ears between my leaves.
And I heard the rhythm of the seasons,
heard the music of a crumbling house,
a house growing while crumbling.
And when I announced my desire to leave,
I heard voices chanting:
Peace unto the shells-
the spiral entrances.
Peace unto the king of the mountains slumbering there.
Peace unto his jingling hooks.

Close up.
My body is a closed room,
my body is a forest and dams and closed canals.
Close up.
Our bodies are angles and narrow covers.
Our bodies are a lock and its key,
and the path to us
is the passion of the plants creeping in the narrow space
between our thighs and eyes,
the passion which induces madness.

Close up.
Our shells remain, even if broken, closed.
Close up.
Tighten the knot of the eyelids.
The colour of our eyelashes -
when we undress, wear our dreams
and hallucinate -
is a closed map...

- 6 -

The sun of the lover dangles, its head bent by slumber.
The unknown should take the vacation of the harvest .
My face should journey in the spirit of the world.
Do I tear up the Book of Exodus,
incline over my image and read its sand
cast in rings like a suit of armour?
Do I whisper to my garments:
Move on a crutch like a standing figure dreaming,
hang as signs and banners,
in the jungles of the fingers and the neck,
where I get drunk and dazed like sunflowers.?
Do I say to this chair:
Follow me; remain faithful to the weariness
which you have sipped shudder after shudder. ?
Do I remind death of the leaves it forgot
at my place on its last visit?

Between my shells and me rises an arch
of colours and distances,
under which cities can pass and repose.
My shells, too, have their trees and streets,
their festivals and bed chambers .

If the Crab would speak, I would ask it
where it would sleep tonight.
If the sea would sleep,
I would give it a bed
in my abode.

1- A Voice

We leave our heads outside the covenant,
granting each its drugs and ghosts.
Your head is a pillow, mine an erupting volcano.

Then we inscribe the document:
' A woman is a transient home for a man
who is himself a transient home.
A man is the tomorrow of another man,
and a woman the future of another woman.'
Yet, we begin the following page,
we converse with our legs,
with the ink and words of the pores,
and play in their masked corridors.

Suddenly, the roaring flames approach,
and the thunderbolt beckons.
We wake ; each runs after his head,
in the yearning for dwelling and residing
and in the waves of running
after the other homeland,
the lost, the everlasting...

2- Dialogue

Between you and me, there is a veil.
You will never behold me.
How do you hope for openness and revelation?
Death has fallen into your heart, so seek the light of death.
And how do you break the habit?
You jumble and you stumble...
My states have taken no roots in you.
- I am your point of repose.
My sun has baked you.
I wear you as a ring with which
I put a stamp on Time.

3- A Song

The body of the poet
is the body of the child and the crow.
A body in a book,
in the ashes of the curtains,
in the door,
in the stone staying up all night,
between my eyes and the book.
A body in the corners,
in the mirage procreating under the mirrors.
A body travelling farther and farther,
a flying stone which receives or beats the sky.
A body which opens in dreams,
closes at night, stretches between the letters.
A body like the letters.
A body retreating in the forefront of the lines.
A body like a suspended road,
unfolding its leaves and questioning space,
where the echo doesn't know its roles,
where there is nothing on my approaching stage
except the echo and the curtain...

4-A Song

I call you, O, end of the night,
get intoxicated and extend,
become a sorcerer
over my bed.
I call you to say:
What does love say to the lover
at the end of the seasons?

5-A Song

Shahrayar is still
in the peaceful bed, in the gentle room,
in the mirrors of daylight,
wakeful, guarding the tragedy.
The light words have stolen his face
and taught him how to slumber
in the blackness of the lake,
in the blueness of the pebble,
amidst his intimate ruins.

Shahrayar is still
holding his sword,
ready for the harvest,
hugging the jar of the wind
and the urn of ashes.
Shahrazad has forgotten
to illuminate the hidden paths
in the orbit of the veins.

She has forgotten to illuminate

the fissures
between the face of the victim
and the footsteps of Shahrayar.