Two Poems
Sargon Boulus
Translated by Sinan Antoon
Times
(The song of a Sumerian who lived for a thousand years)
Before, times like these
have come before
Times when we witnessed
hurricanes that never stopped
uprooting trees:
alluvium gushing forth and mud
swept away to the end of the horizon
covering traces
We have known days like these
When every day comes to enter the eyes
with a strange sun
That is if it comes at all. . .
When we used to hope, the last time
lightening wrote our names
on the tablets of fate, to scatter a handful of dust
on the face of the dead
at the end of the journey
We thought that we had learned
how to travel the road
to the gods’ gate
How to carry the burden
and rise up again after the flood
How to go, again
If days come when we see hurricanes
that never stop uprooting trees
When alluvium is gushing forth and mud
is swept to the end of the horizon
covering traces
A Pebble
The day after the flood
A stagnant morning
There is a tear at the bottom of the world
Frozen like an orphan pebble
The hurricane obliterates everything
Palmtrees, houses, boats, bicycles and minarets
But this pebble stays
right there, shining faintly
Because the hand of eternity
Has polished its bald head just like the Lord’s shoeshine:
There it is under your foot. Step on it if you wish. Step hard
Then cross over. Fear not
Among pebbles, it is no more than
a pebble.
[Sargon Boulus died in Berlin October 22, 2007. Translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon. From Sargon Boulus, `Azma Ukhra li-Kalb al-Qabila (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2008)]