[Muhammad Al-Maghut (1934-2006), was a Syrian poet, playwright, and journalist. He is one of the pioneers of the Arabic prose poem.]
Tattoo
Muhammad Al-Maghut
Now
At the third hour of the twentieth century
Where nothing separates the corpses
from pedestrians’ shoes
except asphalt
I will lie down in the middle of the street
like a bedouin sheikh
and will not get up
until all the prison bars and suspects’ files of the world
are gathered and placed before me
so I can chew on them
like a camel on the open road
Until all the batons of the police and protesters
escape from grips
and go back (once again)
budding branches in their forests
In the dark I laugh
I cry
I write
I no longer distinguish my pen from my fingers
Whenever someone knocks or a curtain moves
I hide my papers
like a prostitute during a police raid
From whom did I inherit this fear
and this blood
scared like a mountain leopard?
As soon as I see an official paper on the threshold
or a hat through the door
my bones and tears tremble
my blood runs away in all directions
as if an eternal patrol of ancestral police
is chasing it from one vein to another
O darling
In vain I try to reclaim my courage and strength
The tragedy is not here
in the whip, the office, or in sirens
It is there
In the cradle. . .
In the womb
Surely I was not tied to the womb with an umbilical cord
It was a hangman’s noose
[Translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon]