1. The Alchemy of Narcissus
(A Dream)

The mirrors reconcile midday and night;
behind the mirrors
a body which opens the road
to its virgin regions
in the ruins of the ages
erasing the star of the road
between its rhythm and the poem
and crossing the last bridges.

And I murdered the mirrors
and mixed their narcissistic hose
with the suns.
I invented the mirrors
as a reverie which embraces
the suns and their celestial dimensions.

2. Mount Sinnin
(A Dream)

Sinnin,
in its naked chamber,
recites to the night,
to the trees,
and to those who burn the midnight oil,
its loftiest sorrows.

3. A Jasmine
(A Dream)

Muhammad travelled in a loaf
never to return.
And Sarah descended into a cavern
asking the fissures and the stones
about her friend
and dissolving in a shawl.
And Ahmad sings
the song of an immigrant
lost in a land that devours
even the corpse of the victim.
And Salih revolves in a cloud
whose faithful winds
guide him to the summit of a garden
with no flies, no corpses.

And I was arising in my poem,
arising in my child-like people,
as supple as a jasmine.

4. The Husk and the Days
(A Dream)

A husk. The city has vanished;
sand around my head. My hands,
my flanks ...
two spears,
and the Earth is a crater.
- The sun has peeled you, the tempest
has ravished your face,
and the lightning has died away.
This is the corpse of the world,
this is its walking tomb.
My hand is a fist of earth
holding nothing but buds and dreams;
my eyes have washed it;
neither the leaves of history
are in it,
nor the path of words.

It is my abode, my green bridge,
arching between the days and the days.

5. The Poem
(A Dream)

I hear the voice of Time:
The poem
is a hand here and there.
The poem
is two searching eyes.
Have the water lilies shut the door
of their hut?
Has man
opened a virgin gate?
A hand here and there; and the distance
oscillates between the child and the victim
so that the hidden star may rise
and the world recover its transparency.

6. The Stones

1.

A stone dropped
and something burgeoned in the walls
and the space
became more tender and more seductive.
A stone dropped,
and something in man changed.

2.

Long ago I became enamoured with stone.
We fused together, then split apart.
Long ago I envisaged stone
to be a navel, and the mirrors
an assignation; we met,
were wounded together, slept and rose,
split apart- then we returned.
And today
I am farther and more piercing
than all that the mirrors say.
For I am the first of the fragments,
I am the last of the fragments.

3.

A stone protects the breasts
of a pregnant woman.
A stone becomes intoxicated
staggers in the eyelashes of the poet
becoming a wild dove
nestling in the eyelashes of the poet.

A stone stays awake all night,
becomes draperies
dangling over the forehead of the poet
and turning into a white cloud.

4.

Guide him, O, white cloud
He knows not how to walk
in the spiral of the dark.
And when he exits towards the light,
toward the hidden dimension
in the homeland of words
more innocent than a bird,
a rifle shoots him.

Guide him, O, white cloud.
Take him and wash him of
the night of his murderers.

By God I ask, O, white cloud.

7. The Loaf

The loaf returned to its leaven
migrating in a poem,
like me.
We strayed barefoot all night.
-Have you eaten?
-No.
-Bid them farewell?
-No.
-Opposed your voice as it opened
its regal wound?
-No.

We strayed all night
at the bottom of a song, witnessed
the sailing ships of letters.
I wiped my letters off my face
and wore the hat of autumn
in order to grasp the travelling tomb.
And we bowed.
The sorrowful poplar heaved, saying -
I can hear it saying -
The loaf and I are two signs.
Each song is a messenger,
and the water is a distant neigh.

The loaf and I are blood.
We strayed all night.
The streets sobbed.
The knees of the minarets bent.
And we bent...

8. The Martyr
(A Dream)

When I saw the night in his blazing eyelids
and found no palms in his face
and found no stars,
I swirled round his head
like a tempest,
and like a reed I splintered.

9. The Face of the Sea
(A Dream)

I hear in Mihyar
a poem
which knows how to wound
the night of the grave
with the sun,
and knows how to come
in the foot of the sun
and the face of the sea...

10. Death
(A Dream)

When I saw death in my path
I saw my thoughts
I saw my face
a caravan stretching like fog.
And I was seeking sanctuary
in the lightning, engraved on the earth.

11. A Dialogue

Do not say my love
is a ring or a bracelet.
My love is a siege.
My love is those rampant ones
sailing to their death searching.

Do not say my love
is a moon.
My love is sparks.

12. Spouting Blood
(A Dream)

I dream.
This voice will not be
my voice.
You are the sprawling corpse,
I am the blood spouting
from a slaughtered civilization,
setting ablaze the fire of death
and extinguishing the fire of death.

13. The Rose

Take a rose,
lay it down as a pillow.
After a while
the farce will dissolve you
in mud and mire,
a bomb will absorb you
into the realm of its possessions.

After a while
take a rose,
name it a song
and sing to all beings.

14. The Bird
(A Dream)

I listened:
A bird on Sinnin
clamours
so that tranquility may reign
and singing become
the edge of a blade
cutting the frostiness of the city
with its huskiness and weeping.

15. The Minaret
(A Dream)

The minaret wept
when a stranger came and bought it
and on top of it
erected a chimney.

16. The Dream
(Day -Dreaming)

Did you go away? Did you vanish?
I knew you were journeying
as sparks and pearls and waves of seduction
going and returning with the seasons.
I saw your fires in the fields,
your eyes were wings,
your face was rising like the horizon
treasuring the suns
and washing the despondent Earth.

Did you go away? Did you vanish?
I saw your face in the fields,
water travelling through the roots
to its mysterious cities
in the grass,
in the river of the seasons.

17. The Waves
(A Dream)

Waves:
on their steps I raise my islands
and proceed to begin my history,
crumbling it,
collecting it,
purifying it.
In my language the space of death reviving me,
and in my papers
the space of the wound.

Waves with commanding images,
waves which fuse themselves
with the ways of the sun
and open their stations in my chest.

Waves which teach me
that the beyond is the orbit
of the dream and the travelling.

18 . The City
(A Dream)

I slept with the city
at the inception of the boughs
and the beginning of the wounds.
On my bed it was more restless
than a boat in thunderous seas,
as the impregnation rocked it,
opening each of its veins....

And the city awakened.
The bed was a river for love
and the impregnation
a history of two lovers.

And its breasts
were two cities.

19. A Prophecy
(A Dream)

To the homeland engraved in our life like a grave,
to the drugged, murdered homeland.
comes a godless sun
from our slumber of a thousand years,
from our paralysed history,
to kill the sheikh of sand and locusts
and kill the time which grows in his prairies
and withers away in his prairies
like mushrooms.

A sun which loves devouring and annihilation
is rising behind this bridge...

20. West and East
(A Dream)

Something used to stretch
in the tunnel of history,
something adorned and booby-trapped,
carrying its petroleum child,
poisoned and sung by a poisoned merchant.
An East like an infant was asking
in exhortation,
and the West was its infallible Lord.

That map has been redrawn.
The universe is now ablaze,
and East and West are a single grave
collected from its ashes.

21. An Ear of Corn

An ear of corn swayed
between the vagabond and his days;
an ear of corn swayed and beckoned,
and I saw daylight as a bell
opening the windows and closed cities.

An ear of corn swayed
in the orbit of springs,
in the lust of dust.
And I saw the birds nesting.
The rain was ships sweeping the ice
from the pathway of buds and grass.
The trees were ships
carrying the cities or taking the moon
in the windward of virgin space.

22. A Magician

Before or after,
the universe is born
tied to the horns of a bewitched deer,
and painting its shadow over the trees:
One bough in its image,
another bough blossoming
between the nail and the nail,
and a third bough enamoured
with the tenderness of fire -

I am the history of that bough
touring the forests of visions and famine.
My face walked in the dome of death
and recovered the magic illuminating it,
but only to lose it again.
Then I called the friendly embers
to burn the incense for its space,
its waves and sails.
And I carried the infant grass,
like my eyelashes,
and travelled in the yearning of suckling,
in strange winds devoted
to my wounding blood,
to my love tied to the horns
of a bewitched deer.

23. Damascus
(A Dream)

You beckoned,
and I came to you, an orphan larynx
seeking nourishment,
weaving its dawn - like voice
out of an accursed language,
a language which penetrates the world
and shatters the door of its ancient wisdom.

And I came:
I have a guiding star;
I have a fire that talks to me.
O, star, give me back the Magi;
O, fire, devour.
The universe is made of wind and leaves,
and Damascus is a navel of jasmine,
pregnant,
spreading its fragrance as a canopy,
and awaiting the child to come.

24. The Names
(A Dream)

I shall call transformation
the captain of your future days,
O, land of the Caliphs and the Followers.
And I shall call
your buried, inscrutable face
a planet,
and call the poem
the halo of the estranged knight,
around your future days.

25. The Pearl
(The Dream-The Mirror)

How do I walk toward my people, toward myself?
How do I go toward my passion and my voice?
How do I ascend?
When I am only a river
bearing the pearl of poetry,
only a dream
that I am a light
journeying through the body of night,
that I am boisterous, embracing the Earth as a woman
and falling asleep,
awakening my love in her
as a conquering flame
which opens in her body
or brings forth to it,
a sign,
that I am
a book,
that my body is ink
and my limbs are words.

How do I walk toward myself, toward my people?
When my blood is fire,
my history a heap of debris.
Prop up my chest.
In my chest there is fire, there are spaces,
and bodies of centuries which drag themselves.
Histories are mirrors,
and civilizations are mirrors

splintering.

Oh, no. Leave me,
I can hear voices singing in my ashes,
and glimpse them marching along
like the children of my homeland.