Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? by Mahmoud Darwish Read Free Book Online

wars
    But I have the gazelle for spouse, the palm tree
    For mu’allaqat in the book of sand. What I see is passing
    A man has the kingdom of dust and its crown. So let my language conquer
    Time the enemy, my descendants,
    Myself, my father, and an unending extinction
    This is my language and my miracle. A magic wand.
    The gardens of Babylon and my obelisk, my first identity,
    And my polished metal

    And the Arab’s shrine in the desert,
    He worships rhymes flowing like stars on his cloak
    And worships what he says
    Prose is inevitable then,
    Divine prose is inevitable if the prophet is to conquer…

The Sparrow, As It Is, As It Is…
    Ambiguity of tradition: this spilt twilight
    Calls me to its agility behind the glass
    Of the light. I do not often dream of you, sparrow.
    Wing does not dream of wing…
    And we are both anxious
    *
    You have what I have not: blueness is your mate
    And your refuge the return of wind to wind,
    So hover above me! As the spirit in me thirsts
    For the spirit, and applaud the days that your feathers weave,
    And abandon me if you wish
    For my house, narrow as my words
    *
    Well it knows the roof, as a joyous guest,
    Well it knows the trough of speedwell which sits, like a grandmother, in
    A window… It knows where the water and the bread are,
    And where the trap is set for mice…
    It shakes its wings like the shawl of a woman slipping away from us,
    And the blueness flies…
    *
    Fickle like me, this fickle celebration
    Scrapes the heart and throws it on the straw,
    Does any trembling remain in the silver
    Vessel for one day?
    And my post is void of any comedy,
    You will come: sparrow, however
    Narrow the earth, however wide the horizon
    *
    What is it that your wings take from me?
    Strain, and vaporize like a reckless day,
    A grain of wheat is necessary so that
    The feather be free. What is it that my looking glasses
    Take from you? My spirit must have
    A sky, for the absolute to see it
    *
    You are free. And I am free. We both love
    The absent. So press down so that I may rise. And rise
    So than I may descend, O sparrow! Give me the bell
    Of light, and I will give you the house inhabited by time.
    We complete each other,
    Between sky and sky,
    When we part!

V.
Rain Over the
Church Tower

Helen, What Rain
    I met Helen, on Tuesday
    At three o’clock
    The time of endless boredom
    But the sound of the rain
    With a woman like Helen
    Is a song of travel
    Rain,
    What longing… longing of the sky
    For itself!
    Rain,
    What a howling… the howling of wolves
    For their kind!
    Rain on the roof of dryness,
    The gilded dryness in church icons,
    – How far is the earth from me?
    And how far is love from you?
    The stranger says to the breadseller, Helen,
    In a street narrow as her sock,
    – No more than an utterance… and rain!
    Rain hungry for trees…
    Rain hungry for stone…
    And the stranger says to the breadseller:
    Helen Helen! Is the scent of bread now rising
    From you to a balcony

    In a distant land… .
    To replace Homer’s sayings?
    Does water rise from your shoulders
    To a dried-up tree in a poem?
    She says to him: What rain
    What rain!
    And the stranger says to Helen: I lack
    A narcissus to gaze into the water,
    Your water, in my body. Gaze
    Helen, into the water of our dreams… you will find
    The dead on your banks who sing your name:
    Helen… Helen! Do not leave us
    Alone as the moon
    – What rain
    – What rain
    And the stranger says to Helen: I was fighting
    In your trenches and you were not innocent of my Asian blood.
    And you will not be innocent of obscure blood
    In the veins of your rose. Helen!
    How cruel the Greeks of that time were,
    And how savage was Ulysses, who loved travel
    Seeking his tale in travel!
    Words that I did not say to her
    I have spoken. The words I spoke
    I have not spoken to Helen. But Helen knows

    What the stranger does not say…
    And she knows what the stranger says to a scent
    Which is broken under the rain,
    And she says to