Ramsey Nasr Poems

the rose the lily the dove the sun
monkey saturn the hydrogen bomb
love's bliss encompasses a lot of things
...

science laugh it off
but it's only natural
for crying out loud
it's never clicked between us
...

turn my mother into a luxuriant garden of snow
creamy-white jasmine and roses grow white
the fullest of sounds come deep from within
like fruit in the stone

turn my mother into chameleons two without eyes
green he gambled and stroked the chest
she'd curled towards him, deepest red
so something beautiful might arise

turn my mother into a cathedral of light in a box
in the morning lift up the wooden lid and listen
to the many-voiced mass that begins
a celebration of loss

turn my mother into the same girl but iron
raise her this time with more powerful blows
console her or teach her some smart magic spells
because in this body she's dying
...

silly juliet
what have you done
those eyes snuffed out
your throat squeezed shut
your gut run through
your fingers cut up
you've murdered your body
with silly silly thoughts
i am here
do you want me
do you want me to rise up to you
to push you up further
to pull you along
to give you my help
to learn to fly together
without letting go
toasting each other
two chambers one heart
i am coming my love
i put on my heavy wings
and rise
i rise
and on the way i'll count the stars for you
and planets too
with water sprinkling from my toes
i'll keep ten toes for you
and both my heels will shoot out light-blue gas
to bring me higher close to you
filth dripping from my eyes
and running down my cheeks
to fill up both my hands
they pour it out
far below
dead filth over dead earth
i am coming closer
i pick up speed
the skies around turn dark i call your name
i see the stars behind me fail
i see them slowly dim
while i squeeze flames from all my hairs
fine tubes over my entire body
my head is burning for you
my hands are ten pinions of radiant fire
i rise with my own power
no longer ascending
i am coming to you
my body melts away
my bones explode like hot swamp gas
i am radiant
feel my body swell and burst
veins arteries capillaries
nerves of light solidified as light for you
i've changed myself for you
i am searching now for you
i light you up from deep inside
i seek the edges of your hollow body
searching for your fingers
ten fingers for me
i burn
i scorch bright inside you
do you feel me
i am coming to you my love
i am coming
...

welcome to the land of milk and honey
where figalmondapricots grow
unmetaphorically on accommodating trees
eat of them and be my guest today
i'll pay your taxi to the first roadblock

my father waits behind the second roadblock
he'll make you his guest of honour too
with oil bread oregano sesame
stars press down upon his roof
sleep there and give him nadir's love

the day to father is hard but essential
try to find a kid with a barrow
take donkeys or scramble on foot round the cliffs
follow the others keep telling yourself
now we are animals this is permissible

wheelchairs go bouncing through dust
back from the city where they cure the sick
diabetic with cancer in blazing sun
many old, many sick, many sweating animals
but that's the whole idea

in the day we are sweating climbing animals
because that's the whole idea
they beat and kick the animals to an end
that one day we will give milk and honey
one day manna will rain from human hands

if this seems insane to you habibi
just think that miles down the road
real girls and boys are sitting nervously
outside starbucks as an act of resistance
uproarious in fear of their lives
...

- A poem about empty dishes
1.

Imagine a room. The room contains a number of regular elements.
There is a window on the left. There is the light it admits. A pearl necklace
and a yellow satin coat with an ermine collar. Invariably there is a table
to display the elements: look, a loaf of bread; look, a basket.
These are the organs.

Adorning the back of the room is a painting or a map. At least, a nail.
Then the canvas is gone for a moment, standing behind the observer.
Painting, window, mirror and map form the boundaries
a second skin to live in. A miraculous membrane breathing
between inside and out.

Only the visitors change. They move the organs now and then
stand motionless in their closed systems of paint and sable hairs
open the window, play lute or guitar, read letters, pour milk
or stand in the Dutch room, all warm gravidity.
Like this lady.

With her belly before her like a glowing sickle
she seems to weigh air. She is expectant. But of what?
The woman is not weighing, she is waiting. Like some kind of Mary
wrapped in the night's pouch of blue and white. Unapproachable
heart with two dishes.

People see her for much that she is not. They used to say,
"Vanitas. The woman is pondering eternal life." They called her
Woman Weighing Gold. Or Pearls. Her belly a crowded room full.
It was the gleam that misled us like aureoles, for centuries.
Because the dishes are empty.

And those who seek references, want deep-sea insights or cherish
higher values should do just that, but this is enough.
For me this is sufficient, like a pagan faith in the tangible.
The sublime resides in this room. A crust is a window is a table.
Vermeer was the great equaliser.

When the painter died, he left the organs intact:
the glass, the paintings, the map and also the yellow coat
that had been worn by one woman and then another
they were still there in the room, which seemed no emptier than usual.
Only the master was gone.

Not a sketch or drawing of him remained, today we know
virtually nothing, no diary excerpts or chance letters
except the letters on his paintings, that have since been spread
over The Hague, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, New York and Washington.
The room has multiplied.

2.

There is another room as well. This room is scarcely lit.
Nothing on the table. It is quiet and deserted. The window
is round and tiny. A peephole through which the world
looked in, casting a sky-blue colour on the wall.
This was the boardroom.

From here loans were handed out for years like so many pearls.
Passing the readies to anyone able to mist a mirror or sign
on the line unaided while meanwhile they tried to keep the pearl
or at least withhold the gleam so they could flog it again later
on a separate occasion,

by transferring it to a new room, where they could chisel
the weight away from the gleam to deliberately lay it on
someone else's table as their holy credit rating, over and over
on someone else's hopeful table - risk has to move, move away, fast
out of this room, further still

from room to room, until in the last pitch-black corner
the shadow of the weight of the gleam of the former pearl was also
removed, and the caboodle repacked so many times the walls began
to slide and tunnels formed of their own accord like bundles of nerves
in a system with no exit.

And the system
saw that it was good

neither head nor tail
uncentred excessive

it was lighter than ether
better than perfect.

Its only reference self-referential
it became more and more multipliable. It spread across
the waters in expanding ecstasy as a sky-blue light, from New York
to Paris, Berlin and The Hague, Amsterdam - until finally
no one was able to distinguish a mirror from a window.

Technically speaking things were going
peachy. Casting aside moralism even cancer
can be seen as a chivalrous form of reproduction
unadulterated profit in fact. We were overrun with prosperity.
It was just a downer when someone asked about the pearl necklace.

The pearls . . . yeah. Where had they got to?
They were crushed and spread, love, like glittering confetti
somewhere on the edges of our economy. But where exactly,
that is the question. And the woman asked once more about her pearls.
Two dishes in her hand. Outside, like a lump of twilight, the sun began to set.

In Washington, basking in her lead yellow glow
the lady had waited and waited. Now she watched
as the dishes gradually came to a standstill, as before her eyes
in a sudden equilibrium of thin air and deliberate hot air the whole
system collapsed like a punctured lung - room after room after room.

3.

I have a suggestion.
It's time to count our blessings. Milk. Earrings.
Delft bricks. We are the owners of light. Like good
trustees we should feed ourselves again with paint.

That's not difficult.
You take a shockproof container to America and ask,
"The orange curtain, that light from the left and that pair of old dishes
can we borrow them? In a couple of months we'll bring it all back."

But we won't.
That canvas is staying here. We're going to dismantle
and bring back every room. We'll reassemble the lot and
sit down in that one room. Calmly counting what's left.

This is what's left:
one mirror. Two hands. Black-and-white floor, golden edges
glowing sickle and ultramarine. The cinders of a catastrophe
are as tangible as bread or glass. As edible as a table.

This at least - this is real.
Let the pregnant woman stay here, in this building. Not out of greed
but to save our lives. We gave them the gleam of a pearl as a pledge.
That will have to do. To each his own.

We were screwed right down the line
wrung out to the bone we lived in boxes of optical illusion
but that paint is ours. Today we will learn to look. Let us
cut back in this room, and grow accustomed to the lean years.

Let us use the very last
bonuses we have left, scraped up out of the shameless
chinks of our souls, to get our canvases back and say
That is bread. This is stained glass. And that's the feel of the glitter of water.

It's not too late.
Look through the window from outside to in. Go on, look: it says
what it says. And yes, that's not much. But we too will be rich.
We will learn to take pride in owning empty dishes.
...

the flowers used to know exactly
when and where young germans
with deeply wounded hearts
would appear in the bushes

pistils and all they homed in on them

by evening one heard
the sobbing crocuses and narcissi
even above the sound of the german
who'd come so far he was now trying
to dissuade some i'll end it all bluebell

consolation was a way of life back then

the nighting-gull dropped by later too
no secrets in the woods those days
heavy hearts just pissed it off
it pealed those cheerful tones
sick bush turned gleaming thicket
a constant switching on and off
flashing blackberries and raspberries

the bush with the german
was now an enticing mini universe
come come cosmos
the stars stayed put
so far away so vast and all
but eight minutes later it came
full-blast from space
red-hot chunks of solace

and every day the same

nowadays you hawk your reject heart
door to door and no one's buying

germans are suddenly suspect
in this grey cankered city

for love freddy wonderlick
had already diluted imagery
but now he knew for sure
every tear is a minus
...

it isn't death that's freezing you
it isn't death that's stifling you
it's both of them and more
death's a leg up into darkness
the EXIT sign read back to front
death is kind infinite kindness
compared to this lifeless
falling falling from the curtain
fall

and the seats are empty and the stage is small
and the curtain has no seam no edge at all
...

that was in the wonderful month
of excess and of blossomings
when my chest swirled up like poppies
ribs splaying like gaudy quills
May cut free my meagre tongue
consuming similes like fire water

I felt ashamed a polder reflex
overcoated between the raindrop and the wind
insensitive to bushes branches thorns
I caught my death of light
and rubbed it in
transparent humiliating sparkle sneezing
came upon me oh wondrous there I went
less would be enough to shame the most
but this was my affliction utter love
...

I - hudson's shortcut

our outcome was that you were in the way
we sailed to that conclusion on a dream
dreamt by a fool: our captain hudson claimed
that he could find a shortcut to the east

go straight and keep the north pole on your left
then you can slip down quickly to the indies
and we believed the guy and followed him
yes, even when he said: "or maybe west . . . ?"

henry hudson had been dismissed before
and when he swore on the shore of a foreign bay
that all we had to do to reach the orient
was set a course straight through america
we'd wisely lowered sail - already wedged
from stem to stern in this new continent


*

II - new amsterdam

the waiting bay lay like an outstretched finger
at the end of an invisible dutch arm
we went exploring, stamping round we found
our way in a deserted fertile backwater

perhaps no other body but ours, which never
managed to win one god, one people for itself
which rose from drifting, loose minorities
could lay the seed for such a babelopolis

who taught you how to use the melting pot?
who said, be equal, be diverse and free
your trade, who told you, dreams can spread like shares?
the true world champions of immigration
we were, a distant spark of liberty
america, the netherlands writ small


*

III - new netherland

oh font of humanism, oh shining beacon
oh cradle of exemplary citizenship
who listens to us now? we have our leaders
they blare their christian values round the place
and mount the moralistic foghorn high
but in america their frightened faces
all gleam with drooling pride, it's not prime time
but still we steal a slot in the cool white house

what kind of model country toes this line?
we bob along behind the big boss boat
impressive, don't you think? a fifty-state fleet
with an inspiring airbed at the back
WANTED URGENTLY: foolish fools with vision
who dare to dream and make the cold sea crack
...