The Third Book: An Inclination to Sunset
By Salah Boussrif
1. My march will be an inclination
to sunset
[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]
· When fullness reaches perfection, it appears empty
[The Book of Tao]
The sea was nothing but
a lamp suspended in the air
and language
before the invention of metaphor
was a bed
embroidered with imagination.
The body thrown in this bed, blazing
Oscillating
between a burning desire and a wave-dizziness
is about to wane.
Who inflamed the temptation of the tongue
and who stoked the ember of this body slumbering in honey
All colors fraternized
and light alone inhabited the distance
With his amorous hands
the poet used to bestow all its losses upon language
and open the windows of existence
on metaphors that resemble nonexistence
….an inclination to sundown
I marched patiently
and effortlessly I was writing things and deleting them
Is this why
“the clear path appears dim”
2. A God addicted to deletion
Shrouded in gazelle skin
Humankind
in the past used to write its history
The desert
was a horizon in whose span the eyes freely roamed
Nothing veiled the view everything
was a horizon
Even death became a horizon or
a bamboo stalk rising toward a hollowness named the sky
The tribes were not spared the killing just as
language was not spared metaphors which enclosed it in blood.
· The tribes did not use to like sheep-herding because grass was a trap and water was the shadow
of a man descending from the beginning of blood
And only the flags
indicated the path of departure
I remember that a historian wrote desecrating the past and opening its doors to all possibilities
he called the desert a cage
he also called the wind the voice of a God addicted to deletion
The earth as he named it
was a ghost’s leaven and deletion’s writing neither water nor fire
were the origin
Rather, winds blowing from an old wound whose existence is inflamed in seduction
and allowed the male to desire the pleasure of the ink to write
the history of the body
with naked desire
3. The first of temptation
The willows were not readying themselves to replace the palms neither
were
roses
about
to become butterflies
The tribes used to leave their trees
and the flags used to hide behind this light which originates from the extreme of the wind
Who leads this madness and who
is this
who
put the night
in the crack of the day In groups they used to lead
their history and consequently they started erasing the old signs
Language
put on its words and meaning became the history of signs originating from
the end of meaning:
The book is a book and do not go too
far in interpretation
· Think a little bit! How humankind acquires one meaning!
[Shahnameh]
The poet put his tongue on the opening of the wound and folded language behind its metaphors, disallowing poetry to become speech
resembling all speech
Book Four…
The Book of Ordeals
I. The blood of the prophe
· “My soul is sad to death” [Jesus..]
· “I am innocent of this man`s blood”[Pilate]
1
Quickly ah my friend
you reached my wound, but you showed no pain you did not deliver your fingers to a rising wind or come close to the flapping of wings
close to their wakefulness
Your prayer
was no luxury
or a passing fantasy I remember
that your cherry was a call
and the slumbering butterflies wove their whispers
in the lap of your solitude in your sensitivity
and handed your bread to hands
who hungered due to their excess of generosity1
Was it you who led the blind(man) to the balconies of light and continued spreading sparks in limbs of the sleepers
or
your hand
the one that greeted me is
the light that
reached my orphanhood
2
Is this a man or
a bamboo stalk shaken by the wind
3
You are an expert in the secrets of happiness
You didn’t spill any blood
And –whenever you were plunged in yours visions— you exchanged the blood of the killers
with your wine
An arm’s length away from you
Humans used to look lofty
restless.
4
There is not enough in my hands to illuminate your breaths
I suppose that you
reluctantly shed your tears and that the one who wept
was not you
and that the wind born from your fantasies is the water that sprang on your cheeks
Who then
wore your overcoat and went out
under rain quiver
astonished as
if
the sky
planted a moon in his heart
or allowed
his soul to cross its fantasies to leave a laugh
that resembles myth
on the forehead of the sun
5
He came to his home
but the people of his home did not accept him
6
-I am
the bread of life
bread descended from heaven
take and eat (this is)
my body
--Ah friend why
did you collect all this
pain
in one hand
and why did
you allocate shade as a road to the blind
had you realized
that blindness is going to become the light of the keen
or
were you
obsessed with a sky
whose clouds will become a drink
for the sinners
7
On the chords of an old guitar you inscribed your sadness
since eternity
you vowed the wound to a body
that seduced its illusions
- How many times did you escape death and how many
plants did you clear
so that the fields quench their solitude you
ah stray child
ah my wounded body
why did you deliver your hands to cold wood and put the soul
in
distant chambers
Are you
ah my friend
the one who let pigeons fearlessly fly and brought back life to the trees which had lost their breath…
- How much time do I need to remain tied to a chord
that sings my grief
8
One drop is enough
to seed the earth
with pomegranate
A Nowhere Homeland
To which path does this bridge lead
did all the crossers escape as they were warily walking to their unknown end
none doubted the enormity of the trap
and none thought that the clock will be the bed of a river that only leads to a sinful estuary
How much time did you need to realize that the sun does not rise by chance
and that night
is a day that wept because of the enormity of what it saw
one version has it that
as you were passing the beginning of life
you practiced watching ceaselessly and you traveled the earth in two isthmuses one
you named noor
with it you lit the routes of the soul and the other
you sheltered
and with it you stitched the cracks of my wounds
at the height of happiness you used to thrive like a seductive ember you dribbled the wind and saved yourself from an inflammation that attacked visions
which wandered in the darkness of their illusions
Wasn’t it you who saw
that darkness is the sister of nonexistence and that this blue sphere
is a spark
that you ignited
with your blood
whenever its candescence
waned
Wherefrom were you bringing the light with which you opened all these windows2
The country did not hide its hatred when you were still plunging into its darkness
Happily you came close
to your death and with rare anxiety you liberated your illusions from horses which ran between the riverbeds of your slumbering river
Who then will defend you against all these stabs
and carry your tongue toward a never-dying light
· The Pleasure of the Light
Is not all this rain enough to cleanse the air
Your breaths are sweeping
and the sparks springing from your trees
are not enough either to open the soul to the unknown lands of its wound
who expelled you from the ladies’ chambers and who
shared the bread with you when you were hungry and awakened your tongue from all this singing
Do you remember how mills turned in hand when you were on the verge of orphanhood and your eye sockets flooded with a light
which due to its delicacy
became
invisible
al-Sahrourdi’s Beckonings
1
I neither drank from a water well nor did my grieves choke
when the universe appeared slumbering
in my laughs
I remember
how pleased were all those who ordered my exposure and all those who supported the desecration of my soul and how I walked joyfully toward my life
as I boast in happiness
I used to walk far away the steps obeying me and the distances
which seemed
more palatable than a collar
freed me
from my fantasies
Illumination was the last light
that allowed me to perceive my own darkness2
I did not explain my secret
and whenever I was plunged in my sorrows
I used to “undress”
some of my breaths
and spread my sparks in the wind
3
Patiently
I used to sprinkle my light in
the darks
of my illuminations
and patiently
I seeded my land
with birds
whose flapping ignited
the light of my day
Ibn Muqla’s Hand
“The precious hand”
Your fingers are expert on the breaths of words
The pen between your hands was a chord or
a dose of perfume which you used to cultivate the grass at the beginning of tremors
The alphabet didn’t forget that
between your fingers it became
sparks
with which the words lighted some of my desires
While you heartened paper with your ink you used to cleanse
some of the agonies of the tongue which appeared in the earth’s clouds
is it a marriage
that you are venturing upon of
the embrace of two bodies: which displayed
desire for each other
Why
Was your hand torn from this cloth
and your fingers dilapidated as
if the sky
was not shepherding him
who was inscribing revelation in words have you become air
or did the tongue
behind its mellowness put an end to all possibilities of speech
Nothing required stripping the wind of its blowing
because nothing
was revealing the fierceness of the line or
the scattering of the stones between the cracks of the teeth
The First Vision…
The wind did not wipe my anguish
The chords of my hand still oscillate between two winds
all singing has self-postponed
and the voice has no place to sleep
without fatigue
The only standing wall at the end of history
was the wall of the cage of birds which sang
then
the beginning of their sorrow
the wind was not helping their flapping nor were they growing as they wished without
anguish
The hunters used to dream of thick groves
and of a sky that sprinkles its water
so that their hands do not weaken and the muteness of slumbering forests
befalls not the grass
The perfume of the sky was insipid because the earth had not yet
spread its scarves
and the sea
was still a lad
nursing from mineral salt
which appeared in the form of a cloud
dispersed by the wind
Who stole the chords from a hand that offered its fingers
to a matchless melody
By the breadth of waves by what does not cease to be
by the beginning of the soil
and by the last birds coming from nonexistence
I attained my orphanhood
and I was gladdened
by what cannot
occur
to a human
mind
God came and hugged me
and before He went to sleep
He informed me of the last dream that will happen to the Caliph He said
birds
will shake off their feathers where no horizon appears
in the horizon
the wind will appear naked and the treeswill appear as if they lost their breath nothing
will remain as
it used to be because the earth
cannot bear its moans anymore
Continue inhabiting your orphanhood and do not return
to a land
lost in the darkness of its illusions
***
1. In the Arabic version "jaa`at min farti nadaawatiha." The literal translation would have been “hands which became hungry because of their excessive humidity.” First of all, we have a synecdoche by using hands to represent a human being. Humidity of one’s hands stands for generosity. Arab poets in the past would usually associate a generous person with the clouds, because as they used to say “water hates height.” The poet is also resorting to intertextuality by recycling a proverbial poetic image from the past.
2. This sentence is very difficult to translate: the literal meaning is "where did you get some of this light that is i your hands which you used to open all these windows.
[Translated from the Arabic by Brahim El Guabli. You can read the translator’s introduction to his translation project here]