from Exhausted on the Cross

Because of a Woman

I came to this city
because of a casual date with a woman,
and now seven years have gone by.
And I crossed the bridge to that other city
because of a date with a woman (it, too, was casual).
Everywhere I’ve gone
was because of a woman.
And despite all my hollow claims that women are disloyal,
my guide was always a woman.
A woman gave birth to me,
and a woman grabbed my fingers and started writing
(and she’s still writing, even after her death).
Every house I’ve ever lived in
was built by a woman
or owned by a woman
or lost by a woman.
My country’s a woman,
and this mother goddess
whose streets I drag a cross through
is also a woman.
And in a past life, when my corpse lay out in the open
and they forbade them to bury me,
it was a woman who emerged from the shadows
to lay me in the earth.
When no one believed me,
a woman believed me,
and because of a woman
I lived life to the fullest.
      It’s regrettable that only men
      will carry my coffin
      this time around.




To Hell

To hell, and let the memories crash
like chandeliers in a tyrant’s palace.
I don’t care which tanks bring them down:
Anglo-Saxon,
Germanic,
Muscovite
(tanks that recoil beneath their guns
like sailors coughing).
So let the memories crash
and let the dust rise
all the way to hell.




The Land

The land’s a moneylender
evicting her bankrupt lovers,
the ones who squandered the ages
composing rambling songs for her,
the ones whose teeth fell out
gnawing cacti in her ditches.

The land’s a moneylender
chasing her bankrupt lovers
always and forever.




In Shatila

“There’s no dignity here,”
the old woman tells you,
the one who left Haifa when she was nine months old.
She’s sixty-five now
and standing in the swelter
outside her “house” in the camp.
She says it all
in just a couple of seconds.
She says it all
in just four words.

Rivers of regret,
years of agony that drown
in just four words.

You look at her bent back and think of the pines on Mount Carmel.
You look into her eyes and remember the kindness of the coast
while she complains to you about the faucets
and the brackish water that comes out of them.
And all you can do is smile as you open your heart
to this lovesick child.
You know you won’t see her again:
She won’t be there
when you head back to Haifa.

What did she tell you as she said her goodbyes?
What did you promise her as you said yours?
How could you smile, indifferent
to the brackish water of the sea
while the barbed wire wrapped around your heart?

How could you,
you son of a bitch?




To Abdel Amir Jaras

Today I found your notebook in my washroom.
It had dust on it, here,
in the home of your “loyal friend.”
What, then, is the state of your words in the homes of opportunists—
those people you confronted
as the sun confronts betrayal?

Have you seen what the years have done to my loyalty?

Your courage, in our minds, is a string of birds—
the grave could never hold you.
I’m as embarrassed by life as I am by death,
I’m embarrassed by how the grass on your grave doesn’t
know you.

Come, let me share my embarrassment.
What has time produced? What have the tyrants done with the earth?
And this river of women dressed in black,
where does it flow to?

The pomegranate trees are blooming in the gardens of Iraq,
the children are playing in alleyways
that are no longer there.
And it’s said that the waters run in rivers that are also
no longer there.
If only we had buried you.

      The workers are washing their faces with cold water,
      with the darkness and the dawn,
      while we go on believing, Lord, that suffering
      is your gift to us.
      One day we’ll come to you meekly:
      Give us back the years of misery,
      give us back
      even the lies we told ourselves.

      Your poems at dawn are broken trees,
      your notebook’s a bird
      Flapping its wings in these shuttered rooms, so come,
      let me share the lack of air with you,
      the hope that slinks off beyond the borders,
      never to return.