translation: Mamon Zaidy
(They will establish their paradise on earth, for-
getting their hopes in the heavenly paradise)
William Woods
in common with shepherds,
you carry flocks of clouds with you wherever
you go. you know that water is an orphan, that
the greatest pains of mankind can be forgotten
on green grass while we sleep.
in common with poetesses,
you know how to embroider a whole desert in
the shape of a butterfly, cleanse wounds with
laughter, and commit suicide on the only day
you are supposed to be happy.
in common with musicians,
you notice neglected melodies in the midst of
the hustle and bustle of calmness, you start to
complain, but then you are overwhelmed by
happy sadness, a vague, lazy sadness, while
busy adjusting the sewing machine.
in common with artists,
you have the luxury of choosing the most seve-
re temperament. You are exceedingly savage.
measuring the distance between the cry of the
newborn and the womb of the mother three
paces in all, then you stroke the brush on the
white board, the red colour drips wearily, and
you feel so happy as you wipe fresh blood off
your hand.
in common with actresses,
you always threaten with open relations that
cannot be interpreted. you know where the
base and political magazine cameras are, so
you do not give them what they want, only the
one who lowers his camera while watching you
gets a twinkle of your eyes, allowing him to
weave rumours and false news about you, you
laugh when your lover tells you that all your
pictures with senior politicians were scanda-
lous.
in common with writers,
you suck the sap of melancholy from dead
mouths, turning it into a pale stab. You are
a woman with a tongue like skinning knives,
intolerable, a filthy whore, you become like an
ancient tomb, like the roof of a temple collap-
sing from so many puzzles.
in common with jailors,
you set the clock to breastfeed the time, no one
grows in prison, and your breasts just flaunt
in the darkness of the cells. a drop of milk falls
into the only dream shared by the imprisoned
women.
in common with nurses,
you withdraw bodies in the hope that your
wounds will heal by themselves. you hide winds
and antibiotics under your skin. for two years,
you have been full of lust and thunder over
empty, polluted beds. for two years you have
been opening and closing the mortuary.
in common with sculptors,
you restore souls in the darkness and hold on
to your right to cry. you breathe your soul into
the figurines, they wake up terrified. now they
have all the choices to flee. you look at yourself
in the mirror naked. who is going to blow on
this ruin?the woman in the mirror flees too.
in common with prostitutes,
You lie on the burning side of the bed and leave
the other to the mirror, which stopped working
a long time ago. You grope for your holes..
Your eternal emptiness.. Despite the millions
of sperms.. Your body is still threatened with
extinction .
(the usual ones)
I like usual women, who wear home caftans,
whose hair is gathered in a kind of weary updo,
Those who care for their men as they do for
household furniture, restore it as well as they
can, and if it proves useless they throw it into
the closet or from their lofty balcony, the
calm in storms, but vexatious when bored,
the Fearful of monotony, the brave when it
comes to bad bets, the lonely in their periods,
solitary In the cells of the day, who fire bullets
randomly when they feel jealous, the usual
women chosen by nature to bury its secrets,
the luminaries in the gloomy nights, the usual
ones like planets, rivers and clouds, who do not
easily give up their femininity, they are forever
females, who carry in their eyes the embryos of
the floods, and in their hearts The last merciful
God casts his teachings, farmers by instinct and
peach trees by experience, who have infinite
memory, and infinite forgetfulness, beauties
without intention, who pity beasts, who join
the wrestling arena in place of their cowardly
lovers, noble though poor, knights though sub-
missive, confident as Cloves, skeptics like great
forests, funny in their stubbornness as church
candles, who make the most beautiful bad
decisions in this world, the usual are museums
of art, fresh morning hymns, the usual women
who do not allow buffoons to make them
laugh, nor poets to seduce them, who do not
live around things, but within them, The simple,
the forgiving, the ones who run barefoot with
the wind, the unaffected, always able to com-
plete stories to the end. The usual ones are the
strain of broken light and extinct flowers .
: ( grandmothers )
I was born from a line of great women
Old women embroidered with ululation and
henna
From their white breasts came incense and
crushed wheat
On their foreheads, chins, and forearms are the
most cruel and brutal tattoos
The sharp black eyeliner makes their prey head
towards them involuntarily
He taught me poetry, spinning, and death stan-
ding as a mockery
One of them, before she died, gave her son
money. She said: This is the price of the shroud
and the burial expenses, and these are my pa-
pers so that the municipal employee does not
delay you. The other said: Wash me wherever
I am and bury me quickly. Do not make me
a mummified ram on my bed. You can’t beat
collapses, teaching husbands, sons, and female
neighbors shahada, sleeping the patient’s
head on their cotton-stuffed thighs, smearing
his body with hot oil and exorcism, widening
children’s throats with their wrinkled fingers,
piercing little girls’ ears, not caring about their
crying, in order to later put on the most beau-
tiful earrings, plowing the fields. They build
houses, slaughter chickens, and make tea with
roasted cocoa while they sit on the patio in the
coldest and harshest winter nights. They pass
the real history of the world from generation to
generation without embellishing the endings.
Their stories are the most beautiful stories.
They invent riddles so that they themselves
become a mystery in life. On holidays, you find
them practicing the primitive rituals of their
ancestors. They put henna on the head of the
sacrifice, take the bitterness and throw it on
the nearest wall. Barbarous, shy, generous,
they know all the dirty jokes about men, they
love commerce and they know the secret life
of the moon. Natural-born sailors who predict
the weather and the movement of the wind.
Peaceful and yet they can skillfully lead a whole
flock of hungry wolves, guard their grand-
children from the oppression of their fathers,
and guide their daughters-in-law. The codes
of the algorithms of their subconscious mind,
like all female living beings, love hiding places.
The color of their skins is like locusts and mud
beetles, thus camouflaging their movement
between crops. They adore their daughters’
sons because they are the true genetic heirs
to them, grandmothers, and even after the
legends disappeared and the prophets were
dismissed from their works, they still practice
their work as priestesses in the deepest Caves
of our soul. –
Water delirium
( The writer is an individual playing with his
mother’s body )
_ Pliny
I love bathing in the dark
The water is a degree or two hotter .
I feel goosebumps all over my body.
That’s what matters
Spurts wildly,
Erases the map of crumbling cities over my
shoulder
Prominent abdomen
And a body ravaged by cholesterol and lazi-
ness,
I count my old wounds ,
I spot new oily heads on my arms,
I hum songs that do not exist
I touch my shrunken penis like the head of a
perennial turtle !
I don’t think about sex when I’m naked,
I only think of those women whom I loved
dearly
To be real whores,
Oh, I swear I really loved them,
Those who loved me sincerely, were honest,
more than they should
I could betray them easily,
As for my filthy whores, I was loyal to them.
I think of them in the bathroom, when I take off
my skin
They are deeper than we imagine, dull, com-
plex, laughable,
multidimensional, and most importantly as
clear as dreams and nightmares too,
occupy spaces,
Very active
can’t get rid of them,
they cannot be removed from the upper cham-
bers,
sticky like scars, like howls in the night,
and fossils in the soul,
The farther you go from them, the more you
stick to them.
they gnaw at your bones, they want to show
you more things,
You would have to go blind, for them to show
you all their colours,
None of us are our biological mothers at some
point in time !
Otherwise, what is the secret of this umbili-
cal cord and the hundreds of rusty scissors
between us and them?!
Serageldin Al-Werfalli is a poet from Libya
