The Bird Follows Me Poem by Ghassan Zaqtan

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 used to spin it in my speech…

Like a pleasant gait on en edge of marble or its dusting
from what the hoofs of mules leave behind
as they climb up the wadi…

'…in my house
women give birth to rings
and disappear from the world behind the door,
here is the paradise of the one I love
and the journey
of the one who saw…'

A prelude like other preludes
I didn't retrieve from muttering

Like a straw bird
It follows me…