translation: Ghazi Gheblawi
Lonely enough with what I am
That being my body in these simple clothes
Running as if the lightnings are my shoes
Howling alone:
Oh, she-wolf
Take me from my mouth
Away from your bosom
Everything turns into extreme rottenness and
grandeur
The sparrows wear their mystic fear
And the terraces raving with extinct suns
Alone
Waiting every night
With fearful ears
For my house to fall down
Take me from my mouth
Oh, she-wolf
I am tired of my wife
When her hands tied me with confident imagi-
nation
Wake up my dear,
The morning has emerged
I am tired of my children
While they grow
Without toys or sweets
From the conspiracy
Of salty and non-running water
In our shabby districts
I am tired
Of the Bedouins storming into the streets
With jeans trousers
Everything is in extreme rottenness and gran-
deur
Tranquillity is not a roof
And women are not the same
Lonely and enough
Every dream that doesn’t lead to me is false
And every celebration of my death is nonsense
The ink is my kingdom
There is always a tiding for me to name
I paint a city
With children that never thirst
And draw another woman
And I might play with the fire that isn’t beside
me
Then I howl alone:
Oh, she-wolf
Take me from my mouth
Since thirty summers
The evenings come barefooted
There was a body and hands for me here
And my window was beside me:
A moon spilling its shape on my mother
And I don’t understand
Why the love was so secret to the limit
That I became ignorant.
O, Mother, guide me to myself
She said: the wind is my wet nurse
So slow down
There is no milk in the cup to drink
I said: it’s fine
I will be satisfied with my lonely imagination
And let everything be in extreme rottenness
and grandeur
Because we’re very quite
Always riding the bus
Crossing to the next day
Where the faces look bewildered to my shadow
And think:
A man walking entirely alone
Howling
Oh, she-wolf
Take from my mouth
Tripoli- 1991
Because I am from the sap of the rough land
My father a logger of dreams
My mother a weaver of promise
That gives birth to meaning
I won’t migrate
To another language
Flying like deceived ashes
Snatched between the windmills
Above towers of smoke
Overwhelmed with delusional joys
And the chatter of reckless whims
And wherever my language might wander
My song won’t fade
Over the skies of our homes
And the farms of our intimacy
And whatever mistakes my mother makes
I won’t hang out the washing of my days
On our neighbour’s clothesline
And my mother will remain despite my blee-
ding wounds
Mounting the throne of my imagination
As if she is a queen
And despite the sting of the vile time
I will be drinking her bitter coffee every mor-
ning
And no matter what
I will stay here
On this rough land
Fiercely using my axe of imagination
Extracting the poems from its stony roots
Granting her my soul’s flare
And my heart’s wings of usefulness
Over here I will mature my intuition wine
Drinking my goblet
The moon will be drunk
And the shadows of my companions will dance
And when the ear of the night sleeps
I explore the depths of my walls
And overtake my guards
Hammering my pegs deeply
Into the heart of the meaning
Thus the thrones of the planets will rumble
And the hats of the stars will fall,
The sun releases in the fields of my poems
Herds of its gleeful horses
And because I am a soldier
Carried with the lightness of eyes
Darkened with the scenes and colours of thirsty
deserts
With the colour of sand watches
Broken by many defeats
With the colour of rain of crows
And echoes of carcasses eaten by the grace of
negligence
With the colour of mass cheers from the forests
of killers
Despite all this
I won’t abandon the nest of my children
And the poor shadow’s retreat
And the vine of dew
I will remain over here
Beneath the shady tree, like a fountain of wise
hoopoes
Chanting with the call of dates
The twin of the genuine copper
Braiding praise to the female
Princess of the trees
Stirring my knowledge to take bunches of
revelation
And sweep the dirt of the wizards
And the spider’s webs
To expose the genitals
And mulberry leaves fall
O, how beautiful is this death
When the fist is victorious with birds
And the juice of mysteries
And the galleries of poetry becomes
Rich with visions and mines of salt and wells
When my hands ember
Fades in the dough of clay
And I die over here
While my glass remains brimful with the hymn
And my words, flocks of clouds
Pasturing on my rough land.
Moftah Al-Ammari is a poet and
academic from Libya.
