Translation: MAMON ZAIDY
I will stray a little in my country
just as don quixote did, but without nobility or illusions.
I will wander enough to know my country
on foot, alone, to be with the blatant truth
when the enemy’s winds calm down,
the clouds of doubts are cleared ...
I will go without intention; streets will lead me to streets
all roads lead to their final destination.
I will abandon my crude certainties and my ready-made answers
I will arm myself with cunning and slyness.
I will plow the fields of doubt,
mercilessly uprooting all weed that take shade with a certainty that does not exist...
I will choke daydreams,
before it builds castles in the sky,
I will lull my wishes to sleep…
I will go where I must go
when the horizon is clogged
and the sky falls on earth…
I will return to the womb that gave birth to me
not as a bird returning to its nest
nor as a prophet walking to the cave of his revelation
I will return as the salmon returns to its river
to lay eggs and die
leaving the vastness of the oceans to others.
Deep into the river of the long tightness,
I will step in reverse,
tracing everything on my journey towards the origins.
I will carry my fretful questions,
my doubts, my axes, and my scalpels,
I will carry whatever lamps I find feasible,
probes and devices that do not care for my perplexity.
And everything that science has built on the rubble of churches,
everything that the mind has deduced from the delirium of texts
surpassing the waves of traditions and rituals
and all the laws enacted by tyrants ...
I will return these bodies to their distant graves
escorting them with everything that befits venerable relatives.
I will get rid of my chronic complexes,
my old obsessions will abandon me,
and my inherent fears,
when I return, jumping over the ferocity of the current and the rocks
just as a salmon returns to its birthplace,
to its final resting place
however, this time I am certain
that the death trip
is a journey of new birth.
O rooster crowned upon this dunghill,
Dawn crept from under your beak and removed the curtain of darkness.
The morning has come, and the light has passed between your wings,
yet you have not woken up.
You are the only rooster on this dunghill.
The hens had laid their eggs and did not await your crowing.
They brooded their eggs enough
To bring new chicks into the world,
While you were delving into the dreams of your crippled dawn.
O rooster who knocked down all the hens
And gouged out the eyes of all the roosters,
Worms climb your legs and you still have not woken up.
The sun tilted toward its dusky pillow,
The shadow turned on its other side,
the bright colour of your feathers faded,
the radiance of your dark comb still snores in its ghostly realm.
It will be dark soon… Wake up, last rooster,
And warble as dusk descends.
Perhaps the sun might relent once
And roll in reverse for you,
So that you are not just a rooster that wakes up at sunset
To chase the sun urchin before it disappears into the darkness.
The sun under which millions of roosters passed,
crowing from the first egg to convince us that they are the one who saved the sun
and released the morning.
You will crow, O rooster, in your reversed night,
And nothing answers you except the wolves when they howl alone,
Nothing but the silence of desolation and the sadness of the stars.
And inevitably the morning will come when you are asleep.
The dunghill will wake up and the chickens will dig for their daily worms.
The chicks will grow without waiting for your only egg.
You lonely rooster.
Omar Al-Kadi, a poet and journalist from Libya that currently lives in the Netherlands.
