Beirut by Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Rana Kabbani
Butterfly of stone
The spirit’s shape when mirrored
The testament of earth in the feathers of a dove,
Beirut of tiredness and gem
The wheat stalk’s death,
The wandering of a star
Between me and my woman.
I had not heard my blood speak
In a lover’s name before
As it spoke and slept Beirut.
From the slight seaward rain
We found our names,
And from the taste of Fall.
From the shape of oranges
Coming from the south
As if we were our fathers
Arriving at Beirut
In order to arrive.
From the slight rain we built our huts
In the high grass we dug our holes like ants
And slept in hope of Beirut that was tent and star.
Enslaved we were in the spineless times.
Our captors threw us at our families,
When we fell our guardians sang
And spoke the words:
From a king on the throne
To a king in the tomb.
Enslaved we were in spineless times.
We could not find a final likeness
But our blood.
We could not tell what made the monarch popular,
Or the guard less fierce.
We could not find a thing to show our own identity
Except our blood stains upon the wall.
We softly sang
Beirut our tent
Beirut our star.
A window giving on the leaden sea.
A curving street that charmed us,
Or an ancient tune.
More lovely than the poems of it
And simpler than speech.
Endless shapes of cities
And new alphabets
Beirut our only tent
Beirut our only star.
We stretched ourselves upon her willows
To measure bodies that the sea had rubbed away.
We came to Beirut from our childhood names
To search for southern space,
For a vessel to contain the heart.
The heart melted, it melted.
We stretched ourselves upon the ruins
To weight the north with the weight of chains.
The shadows wilted,
They broke us and they dispersed us,
The shadows lengthened to embrace a tree
We were the cluster of dead bodies
Hanging from its branches.
We came from land denied us,
We came from pompous language
And from weariness.
This desolation stretches
From the ruler’s palace
To our prison cells,
From our first dreams
To ash.
So give us just one wall
From which to call, ‘Beirut!’
On which to hang these many kingdoms
Selling oil and humans.
Give us one small wall
On which to stand and cry:
Beirut our final tent,
Beirut our final star.
A leaden space scattered all through space.
From the Gulf to Hell,
From Hell ot the Gulf,
From right to the right
To the moderate middle
A hanging-tree for millions.
Beirut
Where are the arcades of Cordoba?
I cannot be exiled more than once
Nor can I love you more than once
I do not see in ocean
Anything but ocean.
Beirut
Witness of the heart
I leave her streets and leave myself
Clutched by an endless poem.
My fire won’t die down,
The doves are on the rooftops
Peace upon the remnants of the rooftops.
I fold the city as I fold my papers
And carry it away, a sack of clouds.
I wake and look in my body’s clothing
For myself.
We laugh and say that we are still alive.
I open the narrow street for wind
For footsteps
For the crafty seller of hot bread.
Grace of Beirut as she stands in fog,
Gratitude to Beirut as she stands in ruin.
The conquerors have led me to the poem
I carry language docile as a cloud
Above the pavement
Of reading and of writing
This sea has left its eyes with us
And gone back towards sea.
From a stone they built their ghetto nation
From a stone we’ll build a lover’s country
From a stone
I voice my slow farewell
The city drowns in repetitious phrases
The wound grows on the sword
And both come near to cut me.
I descend the stairs
That do not end in cellars of festivity
I descend the stairs
That do not end in poems.
For longing’s sake I head towards Damascus
Perhaps I’ll have a vision
Perhaps the ringing bells will echo
Till they make me shy.
Words were consequential
When they changed the one who spoke them.
Farewell to all that’s yet to come
To dawn about to break and break us
To cities returning to other cities
To curved swords and palm.
Our journey lengthens with our wound.
I see a dove fly from one heart burnt by the past
To another heart to a rooftop of brown brick.
Did the fighter pass this way,
Did the falling shrapnel break the cafe plates?
I see nations cardboard-strong with kings and khaki.
I see cities crowning their new conquerors.
The East is opposite to the West sometimes,
And the West’s East too
Its image and its chattel.
I see cities crowning their new conquerors,
I see rulers who will export martyrs
So as to import beer
And the latest instruments
Of torture and of sex.
I see cities hang their lovers
From steel trees.
What are we leaving but this jail?
What do prisoners ever have to leave?
We walk towards a distant song
Or freedom
We touch earth’s beauty
For the first time in our lives
This is a blue dawn,
The wind can be touched and tasted
Like a fig.
We ascend
One
Three,
A hundred and a thousand,
In the name of sleeping people
At this hour
At dawn at dawn we finish our first poem
We tidy up the chaos
And we bless the life
We bless the ones
Who are alive.
Moon above Baalbek
Blood upon Beirut
From a form without a meaning
To a meaning with no form
Was Beirut a mirror we could break
To enter through its fragments
Or were we mirrors broken by the breeze?
Did the Church change
When the priest put on his khaki
Or was it the victim who had changed,
Did the Church change
Or was it we who changed?
Streets encircle us
As we walk among the bombs
Are you used to death?
I’m used to life and to endless desire.
Do you know the dead?
I know the ones in love.
A bullet flies above us
As we follow details of the war.
Did we form our poems in vain
Or did the war root out the poem?
We seek rhythm in a stone
But cannot find it
The poets have their ancient gods.
A bomb explodes
So we enter this hotel to drink.
I like Rimbaud’s silence
His letters which speak Africa.
I’ve lost Cavafy, for he warned me
Not to leave Alexandria.
I found Kafka sleeping just beneath my skin.
A cloak of desolation
The police inside us.
What do you see on that horizon?
Another far horizon and another.
Besieged we were
By the sea and Holy Books.
Are we finished?
No.
We will survive like ancient ruins do,
Like a skull we will keep shape.
Saturday. Thursday. Language. Chaos.
The jeweller’s shop,
Police interrogation.
Tuesday evening.
They climbed the steps and looted.
They strummed their strings
And sang
When they smelled our burning flesh.
We burned our boats.
We hung our planets from barbed wires.
We were not seeking ancestry
In the scratches on the map.
We did not stray
From the purity of bread
Or from our mud-stained shirts.
We were not born to ask
How life came forth from matter.
We were born, and slept on straw,
And drew the wagons like exhausted horses.
Then we burned our boats and hugged our guns.
Do you know the dead?
I know the ones unborn.
They will be born beneath the trees,
They will be born under the rain,
They will be born from stone,
They will be born from broken glass,
They will be born in corners,
From defeats, from mirrors,
They will be born from shrapnel,
From bracelets, from blossoms,
From stories.
They will be born and they will grow,
They will be born and killed,
They will be born and born and born.
Beirut
Markets on the sea,
A nation in a rented flat,
Cafes turning to the sun like sunflower.
Paradise of minutes
Mountains bowing to the sea.
Beirut
Streets that end in ships
A seaport where the cities gather
Architecture for the newly-moneyed leisure
Fossils of our days turned up by the tide
A world that’s coming to new markets
Rising like the dollar,
Like the price of gold
That follow in their rising
The streams of eastern blood.
And we will wake this earth
Which leaned against our blood
We will draw our dead ones
From its secret cells
To wash their bodies with our whitest tears,
To pour the spirit’s milk for them to drink,
To sprinkle words upon their fragile lids:
Wake up wake up and walk back with us to our homes
Come listen to the wind among the roofs,
The wind that wrenched the southern prairies
From our arms
You are the land we guard
Whose curves and wheat we love
The only land we have to stand upon
Come back come back to us once more
We will not leave the region of your blood
And we will keep you from oblivion
The sun has scorched us
Your sharp bones make us bleed
But still we call to you
The echo comes back homeland
From our blood to our blood
Are the limits of the earth.
Beirut
A dream that we shall carry where we will.
A wooden lily and the first embrace.
A poem of stone
A flower spoken is Beirut,
A child that broke the mirrors
And then slept.
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