Attention
Those who come by me passing,
I will remember them,
and those who come heavy and overbearing,
I will forget.
This is why
when air gushes between mountains
we describe the wind
and forget the rocks.

1993

A Roman Colony
We were Greeks
Our dwellings on the borders
Of the Arabian Desert;
But we have two rivers
And some villages
And farms watered by the two rivers…
Also, we did have poets
Who knew the meters
And wrote about women and flowers.
In Kinnesrin
We built a philosophy school
(It was astonishing that Aristotle's disciples
Came to visit us from time to time
Briefing us about the last manuscripts of Athens)
But we were Greeks
And peasants
So, we didn't manufacture weapons
And didn’t train our boys to be soldiers
(Aristotle’s disciples didn't tell us that their master
Was training the son of Philip the Macedonian to conquer cities! )
The world changes they said
Even the sun will rise from the west…
………………
……………… ..
…………… ..
Now, I'm jabbering,
Alone, in Kyriakos's tavern
In Sidon.
My terra-cotta wine cup blackened
My hair is gray…
And I don't know who to tell
Even in secret
That the Romans have banished me
After we became a colony;
But I think that Kyriakos
Knows that. The world changes
They say…

Solos on the oud
A clock rang for the tenth time,
it rang 10 o'clock,
it rang 10.
Across from the church tower
a star flickered and disappeared
and a nightingale vanished in the pines
fading into a green mirage of night.
Come to my house, girl.
My house is my shrine.
My house is a shrine.
The church shut its doors
and the candles were put out
and the kerchiefs were stained with wine.
On the park path
the water was silent, and the dry leaves
and the deep shadows.
On the park path
the sparrows didn't sing
and in the garden
the whispering brook didn't sing.
God of drowned alphabets,
where, where is the shiver of drowsy shadows?Her hand is in mine
and in my chest a garden.
Land where I no longer live,
distant land
where the sky weeps,
where the women weep,
where people only read the newspaper.
Country where I no longer live,
lonely country,
sand, date palms, and brook.
O wound and spike of wheat!
O anguish of long nights!
Country where I no longer live,
my outcast country,
from you I only gained a travelers's sails,
a banner ripped by daggers
and fugitive stars.

1965

America, America

God save America
My home sweet home!

The French general who raised his tricolour
over Nagrat al-Salman where I was a prisoner thirty years ago . . .
in the middle of that U-turn
that split the back of the Iraqi army,
the general who loved St Emilion wines
called Nagrat al-Salman a fort . . .
Of the surface of the earth, generals know only two dimensions:
whatever rises is a fort
whatever spreads is a battlefield.
How ignorant the general was!
But Liberation was better versed in topography.
The Iraqi boy who conquered her front page
sat carbonised behind a steering wheel
on the Kuwait--Safwan highway
while television cameras
(the booty of the defeated and their identity)
were safe in the truck like a storefront
on rue Rivoli.
The neutron bomb is highly intelligent,
it distinguishes between
an I and an Identity.

God save America
My home sweet home!

Blues

How long must I walk to Sacramento
How long will I walk to reach my home
How long will I walk to reach my girl
How long must I walk to Sacramento
For two days, no boat has sailed this stream
two days, two days, two days
Honey, how can I ride?
I know this stream
but, O but, O but, for two days
no boat has sailed this stream

La L La La L La
La L La La L La
A stranger gets scared
Don't fear dear horse
Don't fear the wolves of the wild
Don't fear for the land is my land
La L La La L La
La L La La L La
A stranger gets scared

God save America
My home sweet home!

I too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island
and Long John Silver's parrot and the terraces of New Orleans
I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats and Abraham Lincoln's dogs
I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia tobacco.
But I am not American. Is that enough for the Phantom pilot to turn me back to the Stone Age!
I need neither oil, nor America herself, neither the elephant nor the donkey.
Leave me, pilot, leave my house roofed with palm fronds and this wooden bridge.
I need neither your Golden Gate nor your skyscrapers.
I need the village not New York.
Why did you come to me from your Nevada desert, soldier armed to the teeth?
Why did you come all the way to distant Basra where fish used to swim by our doorsteps.
Pigs do not forage here. I only have these water buffaloes lazily chewing on water lilies.
Leave me alone soldier.
Leave me my floating cane hut and my fishing spear.
Leave me my migrating birds and the green plumes.
Take your roaring iron birds and your Tomahawk missiles. I am not your foe.
I am the one who wades up to the knees in rice paddies.
Leave me to my curse.
I do not need your day of doom.

God save America
My home sweet home!

America
let us exchange your gifts.
Take your smuggled cigarettes
and give us potatoes.
Take James Bond's golden pistol
and give us Marilyn Monroe's giggle.
Take the heroin syringe under the tree
and give us vaccines.
Take your blueprints for model penitentiaries
and give us village homes.
Take the books of your missionaries
and give us paper for poems to defame you.
Take what you do not have
and give us what we have.
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.

Take the Afghani Mujahideen's beard
and give us Walt Whitman's beard filled with butterflies.
Take Saddam Hussain
and give us Abraham Lincoln
or give us no one.

Now as I look across the balcony
across the summer sky, the summery summer
Damascus spins, dizzied among television aerials
then it sinks, deeply, in the stories of the fortsand towers
and the arabesques of ivory
and sinks, deeply, from Rukn al-Din
then disappears from the balcony.

And now
I remember trees:
the date palm of our mosque in Basra, at the end of Basra
the bird's beak
and a child's secret
a summer feast.
I remember the date palm.
I touch it. I become it, when it falls black without fronds
when a dam fell hewn by lightning.
And I remember the mighty mulberry
when it rumbled, butchered with an axe . . .
to fill the stream with leaves
and birds
and angels
and green blood.
I remember when pomegranate blossoms covered the sidewalks,
the students were leading the workers' parade . . .

The trees die
pummelled
dizzied,
not standing
the trees die.

God save America
My home sweet home!

We are not hostages, America
and your soldiers are not God's soldiers . . .
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods
the gods of bulls
the gods of fires
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song . . .
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor
who emerges out of the farmers' ribs
hungry
and bright
and raises heads up high . . .
America, we are the dead
Let your soldiers come
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him
We are the drowned ones, dear lady

We are the drowned
Let the water come

1995