The Last Bird Flies Out Of Granada Poem by Amr Muhammad

The last bird flies out of Granada
Your eyes... the last two boats departing
Is there any place left?
I am weary of wandering in stations of madness
And I have reached no place...

Your eyes are the last two chances
For anyone thinking of escape...
And I... I am thinking of escape...

Your eyes are the last of the southern birds
The last of the sea's grass,
The last of the tobacco fields,
The last of the chrysanthemum's tears

Your eyes... the last popular wedding procession
And the last festival...
The last of the love letters
And your hands... the last two notebooks of silk
Upon them
I inscribed the sweetest of my words

Love burns me, like a sheet of zinc,
Yet I do not melt...
And poetry stabs me with its dagger...
And I refuse to repent...

I love you...
Stay with me...
And the face of Fatima
Keeps flying like a dove beneath the sunset lights

Stay with me... perhaps Hussein will come
Carrying doves, incense, and perfumes in his cloak
Behind him walk the minarets, the hills,
And all the rebels of the South...

---

Your eyes are the last two coasts of violet
I thought poetry would save me...
But the poems drowned me...
And women divided me...

My beloved:
It is a miracle to meet a woman in this night
Who agrees to walk with me...
A miracle that poets still write in this age.
A miracle that the poem still
Passes through fire and smoke
Leaps over barriers, checkpoints, and defeats
Like a horse

A miracle... that writing still exists...
Despite the sniffing of dogs...
Despite the basements of interrogators,
As a source of pride...

---

The water in your eyes is oily,
Gray,
Wine-colored...
And I, upon the deck of the ship,
Like an orphaned bird
Not thinking of return...

Beirut is the widow of Arabness
Of sects,
Of crime, and of madness...
Beirut is slaughtered upon her wedding bed
And people around her bed are spectators

Beirut...
Bleeding like a chicken in the street,
Where have the lovers fled?

Beirut searches for her truth,
Searches for her tribe,
Searches for her kin...
But all are hypocrites...

---

Your eyes... the last night journey
And my suitcases on the ground await the wind
The trees plead in tears for me to take them along
Have you ever seen trees thinking of escape?

And betrayal, and sins...
This is the age in which culture,
Writing,
Dignity,
And manhood are in decline

My notebooks are filled with thousands of holes...
Oil lies happily beneath the trees of slumber,
Between the breasts of concubines...
This is what came to us
Clothed in the garments of a devil...

Oil, this seminal fluid...
Not national,
Not popular
This rabbit defeated in every war

Oil is the drink of emperors,
Not the drink of peoples...
How to enter the poem, I wonder?

While oil buys
A thousand products in Marbella...
Buys half of Paris...
Buys half of what Nice has of sun and bodies...
Buys a thousand yachts in God's seas...
Buys a thousand women, by God's permission...
But does not buy a sword to liberate the South...

---

Your eyes... the last of the palm shoots
In my sorrowful homeland.
And your love is the most beautiful white revolution
Declared for millions of years

Be with me, a woman...
Be with me, a poem
That always travels against the wind...
Be with me, a fairy
For lovers never reach the peak of passion
Unless they join the ranks of the angry...

My beloved:
I declare that all the grapes and figs of the earth
Are the right of the destitute
That all poetry... all prose...
All kohl in the eyes...
All pearls hidden in the breasts...
Are the right of all dreamers...

Be with me...
And I shall declare that God's sun,
And I shall declare without shame
That poetry is stronger than all rulers...

That all poetry... all prose...
All kohl in the eyes...
All pearls hidden in the breasts...
All grass, all jasmine
Are the right of all dreamers...

Be with me...
And I shall declare that God's sun,
And I shall declare without shame
That poetry is stronger than all rulers...

That all poetry... all prose...
All kohl in the eyes...
All pearls hidden in the breasts...
All grass, all jasmine
Are the right of all dreamers...

Be with me...
And I shall declare that God's sun
Resembles in its roundness the bread of the hungry
And I shall declare without shame
That poetry is stronger than all rulers