Ghassan Zaqtan

The birds' departure from his heart
leaves the plains white
where the story is white
...

Is there still time
to tell her,
Mother,
...

The cart:
still lurches on since grandfather fled
the boggy fields
The family:
...

He has to return to shut that window,
it isn't entirely clear
whether this is what he must do,
things are no longer clear
...

I ascend the seven levels
Of sleep
In sleep you are
...

How I wish he had not died
in last Wednesday's raid
as he strolled through Nazlat al-Bir —
my friend with blond hair,
...

I must leave this town:
a town where the sun never shines on me,
where there's never any shade,
...

Four sisters
climb the hill alone
in black clothes.
Four sisters sigh
...

How clear it was the singing of the Moroccans who were swimming
on the river's face before sunset, the women who leaned on the bridge
among their children and vegetable baskets and tombs of saints…
...

In the year two thousand or a little before, there maybe was
a prelude that inhabited me, it resembled summer
in the rooms of bachelors,
...

I have a tune in the melody
with which I did not arrive
but it is my only gold
and means
...

In the house of cactus
I finish what I started
...

Nature that has left me hopeless
became arid in the fields
my abandoned homes in others' memories and feats
...

Aside form her fingers, she got no sleep
she was there suspended in remembrance
patching up their dreams in a dim light
...

There's a helpless woman in his sleep
a recluse woman preoccupied with simple thoughts
and needless accessories
...

He thought of going back there
where he had left her listening
in a blue shirt and short sleeves
...

What led him over there
in such cold weather?
Not longing or curiosity
...

Darkness has a hole,
with space for a hand,
black, with five fingers and an arm
Darkness owns a house,
...

In Jabal Najmeh, by the woods, the wizard will stop me
by a passage for boats with black masts
where the dead sit before dawn in black garments and straw masks,
...

The one you accidentally found in the mirror

in its dark corner to be exact
was there alone thinking of you

befriending your solitude
...