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FIVE FRAGMENTS FOR THE SADNESS OF GREAT FIGURE
1
In the wide courtyard of our house a child not even nine yet tossed some wheat on the earth sprouting cities of hunger. 2 It is not what you now pay as price of pure drink But it is the beginning of the abundant rain the beginning of counterfeit the beginning of trade and the beginning of the end that might settle in the mind where the earth falls in the palm – empty. 3 He waited for the caravan so when it did not arrive he turned twice to the right and the left resting his arms emptying the sadness of the two earths in the empty rivers of the heavens. 4 When I finished writing the letters she asked me could my word return to me my traveling face and her luminous countenance in my blood? My sadness answered: I am unable with your blood to give an answer or to revere the ancestors. 5 Beneath the weight of a strange replay I stand my eyes open its doors to the nearby morning I see in the courtyard of the house two things: my darkness and the sad trees that are my height trying to escape out of exhaustion it fixed its trunk in my room spreading its leaves to my window and planting its fruit the books. |
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© 2004, Ahmed al-Shahawi |
© Translation: 2004, Mona Zaki |