Wrapped in my blood I come,
led by raging fires, guided by ruins.
Crowds of people ripple as torrents of tongues:
Each phrase is a king, each mouth is a tribe.
....And I am the one disowned by every tribe. 1

I exited, embraced by wounds
and embracing the murdered Earth,
building my tents in my blood
and telling my name to gather my notebooks
from the house of Ishmael 2

(Ishmael floats,
a desert 3 of dying books; above him
a moon donning its sabre
and dragging along its camels...)

/...And I am the one disowned by every tribe. 4

I search for the guiding sparks / 'The Daughters of the Coffin'*
slumbering in the down of darkness / in their light
I see my face a ladybird, see my death
a bird perching on the shoulder of the dark,
and see the sand improvising speech.

On the east side of the Euphrates the storks
carry the keys of migration,
having destroyed their nests.
And on the West Side a temple rises /
two breasts swelling with chaff.

/...And I am the one disowned by every tribe.

Here I am, ravished by my own hands /
my blood at war with my blood;
a body is torn inside a body,
and love is no body; my death is no body. 5

Who are you ? 6 My wreckage yells at me
and my words are on the verge of denying me.
A fire comes to him from a land which floats
and slumbers under his pillow.
-----------------------------

A fire comes to him from a land which floats on heads
stuffed with tongues - creatures created by a god who dictates
blood as books, affirms what he wills
for them, and abolishes what he wills .
A fire comes to him from a land which floats,
sparks come close to gripping him.
How can he exit - how can he break the siege? 7
-----------------------------

I said farewell;
I recall a figure crouching in the house of Ishmael 8
stringing a rock to a cloud,
gashing the stars with stones,
living amongst tortoises
which drifted into dreams and went to sleep.
I said farewell/ I recall a howdah
hallucinating 9 with my lady,
and I recall a nation
hallucinating with the last remains:

A headless beast, crowning itself a god
throwing its shadow
a homeland like a jester's hat.
(Its shadow 10 is a land which spreads its fields
as beds, and is guided.....)

I said farewell.
Eclipse engraved itself upon my forehead.
I granted my accent to fragmented time
and granted its accent my certainty.

/ ......And the Earth 11 enters into metallic coughing /
streets paved with children - offerings, 12
a nation vaunting its throne of bones . 13

-----------------------------

Go, roam around;
thoughts like rotten fishes, a city of tongues
chopped up and trampled over.
Go, roam around,
and ask the roots
how the body of the place draped itself in its beasts;
or ask the crow of the alphabet- Ishmael's body,
(Ishmael is the map of the ages).
Go, roam around/
open a head here, open a thought there.
-----------------------------

You will see an image of your face,
unknown.
You will see your garments on the body of another.
Perhaps you will get ensnared by teeth
which speak the language of angels,
or have the shape of the heavens.
Go, roam around/
You will see pigs transformed by The Book into gazelles.
-----------------------------

...../ And we are afraid to feel the loaf.
And what to say to a murderer
who weaves
blood into pillows ? 14

Who are you, Ishmael ? 15 Your footsteps bleed
books which snake-charmers collect.

In each letter is a pit,
in each comma a mirage .
Nonsense and the divination of a fable.

You've left me no place near you,
a place where my ink can weave its garments,
that the liberating flames may brother what I feel and say/
You've split me in two,
created a schism between my blood and me -
Who are you, Ishmael?
And how do I see you the moment I don't see you ?
-----------------------------

But Ishmael is a wound,
and I am the comrade of his suffering.
My visions nurture him tenderly,
and I am a letter written to him-
a letter from an insider - an outsider.
-----------------------------

/.... And the Earth enters into metallic coughing/
Its prophet is Hayy ben Bayy 16 .

The nation has shrivelled and dissolved
in a stream of mud which flows and dissolves
in Hayy ben Bayy.

O, Sun, O, foot of daylight,
you have deserted your night with us,
and forgotten it...

- Who are you?
- A man from Tamim.

" And if a flea on the back of a flea
attacks Tamim,
their crowds will flee." 17

-No, I am not from Tamim.
- Who are you? A Taghlibite?
- No, I'm not a Taghlibite. 18

.../ And the Earth enters into metallic coughing/
Its prophet is Hayy ben Bayy 19 .

Who are you, Ishmael? Our stage 20 continues its show.
-" Exalting your glory on high."

The neck of the shell is a priest
who strings Time to his threads,
and tailors a pair of trousers for each moment.
-"Exalting your glory on high".

Who are you, Ishmael?
(It's said that the sun
for you is but a pitcher,
and the Earth is but a plate...)
Are you a magician's fortress,
or a ghoul's head?
-" Exalting your glory on high ". 21

The lung of the ages is ruptured
and the Earth is a weaver's rag.

Wrapped in my blood I walk,
led by raging flames, guided by wreckage.
A festival with which annihilation favours its offsprings,
a festival for Ishmael putting an end to Time.
(Would he, I wonder, inaugurate Time?)
A festival too grand for the place to accommodate .
It is said Ishmael has come, and it is said he has disappeared,
his guests have packed the place:
sects and deities which feast together, eat one another,
- and the words get jumbled.
-----------------------------

- One crowd distributes roses,
celebrating the erection of guillotines .
-The Arab atlas is the skin of an ostrich which defeated another ostrich.
- No victor but He / The saddle of His horse is gold,
and a cloud is His forehead.
-----------------------------

-Are you an Umayyad? 22
- No, not an Umayyad.

- Are you a Hashemite ? 23
- No, not a Hashemite.

A festival for Ishmael (Ishmael came and, it is said, he disappeared),
his guests are sects and deities which feast together
and eat one another- divinity mingles with bullets.
Is this the salvation ? 24

I call you, Ishmael; the wine of our covenant has been served
and the feast of dusk
is in all its glory -
You and I are the servers of wine, and around us
the insects of weapons besieging us
and hatching their eggs...

I call you, Ishmael; I inaugurate the end: I am not your offspring. 25

Before you, I gave my Paradise its Eve,
and before you, I beheld the face of God .

I call you, Ishmael ; I end what you began-
I give my feast in the hall of the ages.
I uproot myself from you. (The last sea gull to read the shores
is sitting by my side,
and the first sea gull to write the shores
is sitting by my side) .
I inaugurate the beginning,
creating playfulness like the face of God,
swimming in the waters of the alphabet:
in everything His secret flows;
it's not for the like of Him to be enchanted by His roots,
or to be delimited by an identity . 26

I learn the words anew, I master their secrets
and say:
My roots are play,
and the boastful swagger of ecstasy-
A revelation which inaugurates every light in fondness,
and makes the earth its bed, as does a stream . 27
And I say: My ancestry is a passion
which was enamoured with space,
and forged its sails out of the body of the air .
Dawn attires me in its bountiful joys,
and each cloud
is a homeland for my love . 28

I also say:
My love learns the words anew,
masters their magic,
and shares with noble grapes
their cunning . 29

The days of my love are trees impregnated by the seasons-
its hands are dawn -
not the dawn of Ishmael,
but this blood poured out in the cup of words;
not yesterday,
but this wreckage:
corpses, a brother and a brother,
gardens of friends and lovers ;
corpses- promises, the yearning of the absent,
the longing of those living in waiting,
and the passion of a dreamer;
corpses- feasts, their wine is the sky, their savouries are books;
corpses- impossible to tell the butchering sword,
from the butchered neck, from...
corpses-
out of the vapor of their flux rise Suras* which proclaim:
Murder is the beginning ; the murderer is jumbled with his victim;
a house screams: I am a grave;
a poet yells:
My people are a space of blood;
and space confuses space.

Wrapped in my blood, he walks
led by raging fires, guided by ruins:
I walk ahead of words towards their bed
in order to see the lake of their death.

Dusk has said:
I have erected the neck of ash 30
as a bridge to every prophecy .
Dusk has said:
Barren is the body of the city;
I have impregnated it, revealed its sex
to the liberating sap.
Dusk has said:
Had I had a home, I would have invited you
and said to you: 'Here you can believe and disbelieve,
blaspheme or mock or dream.'
and would have had a wider space for your madness,
would have been the most faithful friend.
Dusk has said.

.../And I am the one disowned by every tribe . 31

That I may have the bliss of hearing the voice
whispered by the larynx of dusk,
I've granted my poppies to friendly fields,
and my inkpots to the leaves of the seasons.
I have granted my memory to each wrinkle
in that body which I have called a 'homeland',
and which lives without a homeland.

And I've worn my poetry as a shroud. 32

I've given the tiles of snow my verses
in order to grant them warmth.
I've given the sheikh of the wind a crutch
which my father inherited from his grandfather.
I've given the eyelashes of the winds my windows.
I have given every lover my passion and fire.
I have given Hagar everything a son can give.
I have given Ishmael the prettiest things my childhood knew,
that I may have the bliss of hearing the voice
which the larynx of dusk has whispered.

Dusk;
and Ishmael is entering dusk,
the dictation of a desert,
and your rolling head
is its rhythm. 33

Dusk, and nature rejoices in dusk.
My blood is an ode to dusk.

A willow spreads its tresses
in order to cuddle dusk.
Water deserts its course
in order to witness dusk.
In everything there is a rose leaning
tenderly on the shoulder of dusk. 34

Dusk, and the sky collides with our steps.
Here I am, shaking hands with a creator
whose fingers have frozen,
giving my language
to the ink of death,
following this light ball of spiders' webs,
and saying: ' My land is a dead lover and a dying lover."

Here; I shall paint on my hands
the luminous planet of dusk,
in order to greet the withering rose I have picked
from the balcony of Time which I have brothered,
and in order to touch its virgin mud,
which will return to the elements their magic,
and say unto language: "Follow me.
This is the beautiful dusk;
its victim inherits its victim.
This is the guiding dusk." 35

Wrapped in my blood I come,
led by a dream, guided by sparkle of light.
I have prepared my house for Ibn Rushd,
for Abu Nuwas and al-Radiyy,
and written to Ta'iy, asking him to come,
and said to Abu'l-Quruh: Abu al-'Ala' has come,
so have Ahmad and Ibn Khaldun.
We shall proclaim the Verse* of the depths,
the hissing of the primordial flux,
and deconstruct the buried language
in the forest of things - shall read a rock
which had remained obscure,
shall hear what a jasmine whispers,
and what flickers in the minds of the fields:
Love is the rose of desire
and poetry the fatiha* of minds. 36

.../And I am the one disowned by every tribe.

I call you, Ishmael, I complete what I initiated.
I give my feast in the hall of the ages.
Nothing remains of the body of place but dust /
I hug it as clay,
and as the stroke of a creator-
playfulness which dissolves its balsam in my blood.

With the innocence of play I mingled.
I saw a wing in a stone,
saw my body a rose dictating the book of its nectar,
and saw the universe as ink.

With the innocence of play I fused.
The images of nature changed.
I said unto playfulness:
Devour my body, take me,
old man of my passions,
luminous sea.
Give me a lap that shares with me
my rampant lust .
You have an image upon whose limbs my limbs are engraved,
and you and I are wrapped in our covenant. 37

And I am fortified by my rampant passion,
I am my dream ; I inscribe its mysteries
as images which divulge their secrets to me.
I am my body,
and to the body are my supplications.
The dream is the blossom of my feasts,
the dream is my bread and celebrations.
I see as though I were a piece of clay
mixed with dust other than its own.
My body rejoins me to my body,
and my question questions me.

I see as though I've brothered a fool,
and driven to the water a herd of palms. 38
(If only Ishmael would liberate
himself from himself . )

I have brothered a fool and roamed astray,
accompanied the fern of ecstasy,
dressed in weeping willows, and said:
" Roses are a lover's tent."
(If only Ishmael would liberate
himself from himself . )

I've brothered a fool
and was the bridge
between one temptation and another.
(If only Ishmael would liberate
himself from himself . )
I've brothered a fool, let Creation dwell under my cloak,
and announced out loud: " The truth should be an ascending path
behind me."

I've brothered a fool in order to enter the time of eclipse,
and embrace the last rose,
that it may become
the first of the things I say. 39

Whatever there was, there was.
City dwellers and Bedouins- a dictionary of a legend.
(The crow has tended to whiteness/ so - and - so
has written her childhood as an amulet for passion,
and so - and - so has written its history
as an abode for Ishmael- a field of blood) /
I say:
I have given my age to dust,
and entered the womb of eclipse,
a phantom of an emerging history -
I almost hear its steps .

O, image which is to be,
my language and my love,
if you are one, then in your name,
in the name of your passionate yearning,
I am I - and I am other.
(As though Ishmael were tearing
himself from himself . )

It is dusk.
And nature rejoices in dusk.
My blood is a chant for dusk.
A sea ripples as it comes to me,
its waves ablaze, repeating:
This is the beautiful dusk-
Its victim inherits its victim.

This is the guiding dusk.

1-He walks alone;
he walks ahead of his time.

2-Had Ishmael been a field, I would have poured my clouds over him,
had he been a tempest, I would have been a horizon for his blasts, would have been his friend.

3-A desert, a necklace of sand; the caravans are its string.

4-In vain do you ask about your friend; he has died.
The house that gave him refuge has died too / dig a road to meet him, in your lasting heart. But, do you think the heart lasts?

5-No water knows where my desert is, or how I taste it.

6- I hurl my questions, but find no answers.

7-The generous trees grant me their garments
and a star extends its hands to me...

8-Ishmael's dreams are crouching, his forehead is earth/
Ishmael was nothing but a voice tearing itself, a voice without a space.

9-Tihmaz Bey is still hallucinating with the murder of his brother and slaughtering anyone who disagrees.

10-And his shadow has secret watchdogs and guards.

11-A land of wreckage / a jungle of tribes and massacres,
a land that crowns our age
as a king on the throne of fables,
a land that heightens the awesomeness of the distance
between our footsteps and our hell.

12-Slaughterers and executioners sharing the skins of their victims.

13-Qiriqmaz presented his wife with a bracelet made of a child's bones.

14-The act of a Sultan; are you a fool or an ignorant fellow to say: No?

15-Was Ishmael a caravan which would see its beautiful opposite and cull it as a brother?
Did he use to raise his head as an arch for the procession of his heart
and see the sky as a game for his imagination?
Did the unknown truly guide him to its mysteries, and did love for the sake of love orbit in his name, reading its dreams in the rites?
Was Ishmael no more than a conjecture, or was he a sin?

16-Hayy ben Bayy is a machine;
nothing can translate its magic.

17-Kujuk is sharpening his spears;
he has destroyed the houses to erect his fortresses.

18-Kuzlar Agha said: The money of the regions belongs to the Prince.
He took the women as spoils of war and bought his position for cash/
Farhad is his young successor.

19- They brought the last survivors,
brought their legs, and their noses: a fatwa * issued by Tuman...

20-A feast /
Each skull drinks the wine of its love from the belly of a corpse.

21-Foam../ and Ishmael floats
a cemetery ruminating its dead and pouring its saliva
as elegies.
And the Earth enters into spasms of metallic coughing / its prophet is Hayy ben Bayy.

22 - Umayya's citadel has crumbled,
and God feels no sorrow over its misfortunes.

23-O, house of Hashim, return to your palm trees,
dates have now become so cheap.
If you say: we are the clan of Muhammad,
So are the Christians the clan of Jesus.

24-Have you been asking about the stars of my tribe?
They've waned/ I like those who wane.
I have come to believe: the wings of hens are angels,
and the sun is the peel of an orange .
I have come to believe: my kind is moss,
and God is a machine.

25-I uproot myself from him. My family:
a murderer of gods,
a creator of ecstasy,
and a liberator.

26-What? As though water were my memory / Do I inhabit the heart of a spring?

27-I gave myself my passion, and forgot myself.

28-I hid my sorrow in a wall, in our ruined house/ pampered by a sleepless star .
My despair is a mask,
my anger a startled gazelle nurtured by a child.

29-What does somebody in chains say,
somebody whose book is erased by the prophet
and his tongue erased by the Book.

30-Ash has mixed its garments with the wind/ gone to sleep,
its pillow a horizon and a sun.

31-You have resisted . Even the light has died/ Aren't you a pulse?
In everything there is a dead pulse/ Do you rise? How do I grant my steps your path ?
How do I begin? And where do I go?

32-Daylight sat exhausted at my table
and wept / I rejoiced: it was crying with me.

33-The ink of the cave still prints its axe on the heart of my age . I don't belong to it. I'm its contrary:
A digger of dreams- clouds which have been promised the lightning.

34-Wherever I go, I find pierced hearts, and see heads dangling...

35-The shoulder of daylight is wounded, the night limps/ our square is a grave.
I'll gather a rose and add it to my letters.
Beirut is a fugitive's camel, and death is its howdah /
I saw crimes grazing, saw their lambs,
and saw the dancing of metals.
And I see now: the tents are the tents, the ruins are the ruins;
roads wrapped with the blasts of their flux,
fire understands my language.

36-A monkey is crouching on the stone of prophecy,
gazing at me as though I were his saint.
Do I say that Ishmael is my fire, Hagar is my abode, and Abraham my garment?
What do I say to him?
Do I claim that I am a god and declare my paradise:
Eve is apples, Adam is lust,
and death is the key of heavens?
Do I say: I have a foot here, and a hand there,
and have horses in the air?

37-A time which illuminates the image of the new Time
a time- a creative passion, and the grandeur of a feast.

38-The palm trees have bows, but no arrows.

39-I'll say: Ishmael is a valley of stones;
will say: Ishmael is clay that has cracked and splintered;
will say: Ishmael is a craftsman's art,
and Hagar has not migrated.