Sinbad In Baghdad (After So Many Years Of Sailing The Seas, Sinbad Decided To Settle In Baghdad) Poem by Istabraq Al Ahmadi

Is this the city that I have
Tamed the perilous seas
and sailed the four corners for,
To teach people how to spell
and sing its lovely name?

Where is the verse that filled the air
And mixed with 'the song of Rain'
That made the flowers in their naked pots
Shiver, sway, shudder and dance
Like a dervish who swirls in a trance
And feels himself out of space?

Where is the music that intoxicated
The narrow jasmine-scented streets
And swam on the patios,
under the terraces,
And into the open windows to meet,
Like blood running through the veins,
the lovers' eyes in the cascading gardens
and under arcaded passage ways?

When I left you, I saw the palm trees
Lining on the banks to salute me,
waving their forks which trembled
Like when your two eternal rivers
wake as the fisherman throws his fish net
only to pour their ecstasy
as prayers songs and poems.

Now, with the flooded streets
and garbage heaps,
And the multitudes of faces,
some strange,
Others fallen apart,
Like a sinner with untold sin,
You are consumed form within
By sinkholes and black holes.

O city of beggars and tin houses
Where the thieves steal in broad daylight,
Where the fall of one idol,
Made room for billions more
who stole the gold, the bread
and the crumbs of our dreams?

I wonder to whom the birds sing,
May be they are doomed with singing,
Or that they mourn the newly-wed couples
carried to the pauper's cemetery,
Leaving their first supper behind.

I used to draw your face on the waves,
In the sky, on the shining stars,
in every story I tell,
In every sea I sail,
In every pearl I gather
To make you a necklace
Shining like thousand moons,
In every kiss I sent you
from faraway shores, on the night breeze,
In the breath of the dawn,
With the call to prayer,
With the sound of the bells
Of the churches,
in the gurgling water
Of your rivers
to which the lovers confided their love
and the names of their beloveds.

O celestial kingdom of love
Where the gold gilded domes
Bathe in the rosy streaks of dusk
That slumber on the leaves
Of the vine trees where
The nightingales
In an orchestra,
Sing full throat
For the farmers in their bowers
And the wheat stalks that bend
With the wind
like some Chechen girls
dancing.

Alas, you are now made of tears
and of the hooves of the horses
of the new Mongols
and the invader's Humvees
That turned your lush orchards
into a graveyard
That even your children escape from,
Preferring to die on foreign lands
In nameless graves.

Now I can only see shadows lurking
In every corner where death,
Like a thief, counts the souls
Stolen from markets, kindergartens
and trenches.
I see dreams blown to pieces,
Smiles shut for ever
With TWO THOUSAND NIGHTS
AND THREE.


Why do I still hear Abel's cry?
Is Cain still beating him?
Why is Cain still alive?
Didn't he die?

Why is Abel's corpse still open
To daggers, swords, bullets, mortars
And smart laser-guided bombs?
Wasn't it buried by the crow?
Is the mission not yet accomplished?

Are the adulterers of the night
Still inviting Cain with his jets
And skull-spangled banner
To your virgin bed
Where you comb your fair hair
To make Shat Al Arab
From your golden plaits?

I see mourners walking every street
Blocking with tiny coffins
The bright sun rays,
Smothering with blackness,
The sun's complexion,
Like rain drops on a dead black bough.
What is that dark smoke
Covering your gold brocaded robe
That I wove from the threads of my heart
To prevent the sea from parting us?


O first song of love
Which, if lost or forgotten
All the languages
and meanings
Of love will be lies
And all the colours of peace
Will be duller than death.

Istabraq Rafea Al Ahmadi