A Song Of Temptation For Nothing Poem by Ali Ahmad Said Esber

I do not believe in the minds of the crowd
I believe in light—
radiating and penetrating, pointing toward a direction.
O tree of wisdom
how can I brother the Jerusalem woods to me?
And who is this One who is never present
except in a funeral or on a throne?

Not yet. The disaster has not arrived.
The flood has yet to burst.
The Mediterranean is readying itself. The oceans stamp and shudder.
Who will gift this head to the king of trades? Who will say to Hannibal:
"Rome defeated you, but you are the victor? And from your skull another dawn rises now."

My body is not ether. My body is dust and bone. A physics of arteries and veins. I live
in a hut of smoke, and I wear clouds for clothes. Endlessly and without ever succeeding, I try to heal the sky.
What a criminal I must be, living innocently like rain. My only sin is that I compete with light.
Shut yourself up before my face then, O sky. I vow you will never see my face at your door again.
And you, O planets, I will not ask you again to be
a ladder for my steps. Inside me countless planets abide.

And now, lover, strike up your song!

Is your throat your lover? Is your lover your throat?
Don't answer. Just sing.
Time tumbles, a stone in the hands of its god.
His children are mountains of weeping.
I note a star above your head, a star dimming.
I sense sails being torn in the lakes of your dreams.
Sing!

Waves take shape in your features. You sing the tide's ebb and flow.
Praise to song.
Praise to love: right and wrong are a pair of twins between them,
and the truth is their shared wound.

Here he is ringing the bell of meaning,
but is there anyone to listen?
What is the hand you reach out toward us, O sun?

Sing, lover,
prophecies scamper away from you jealously.
To you belongs life's ageless allure.

Translation: 2013, Khaled Mattawa