Paradise of Nothingness
Translated from Arabic by Khalida H. Tisgam
If there are armies, the measures will be luxurious and forgotten like the gardens of aridity ripened unhurriedly.
Wisdom- these black treasures in the mouth of the wolf- make you resort to a live mate who raises his rusty iron above.
Salute nothingness.
If there is war,
Baghdad will be pecking the corpse of Babel.
Or conversely,
A Ziggurat that is demolishing in the book of (Abou Mikhnif) (1);
a Paradise like joyful stabs in the bowels of a asleep.
Justly laughs at Iraq.
Justly laughs at lads struggling with a drunken policeman:
His forged badges in his coat and his hands are fettered to a coined Dirhems(2) of gasp and sever cold.
What shining badges on his miserable chest!
What a feathery hat; punctured while it avoids the thunderbolt with an amputated head!
What badges of bravery hanging over like the keys of a banker,
like sacrifices turned over by the sun:
Yes, Yes and No, No.
What a kick that is stamped on his face; the angle face!
What lazy airplanes that throws their backgammon in the desert!
Let’s be eaten by grace and get healthy.
Eaten by grace because our faces became rotten out of the stab of lightening that heals.
and we get healthy because our bowels are saturated with poisons of the Marines.
Be eaten by grace and get healthy because a mangy dog had rub its skin against our ages and got lost.
If there is a war, our Babylonian brother will be sitting in the shadow untying the bandages out of his heart and playing at the buzz of flies;
at the Resurrections buried here and there,
at the improvised eternity,
at the obstinacy of the female who washes the dresses of mobs guarding bags of flour.
If truth is saturated with three bloods; menstruation, semi- menstruation and parturition- certainty will be cold as the poisoned fire in the women’s house,
as the poor weeping the morning star,
as the small idols in the word “Allah”.
Or as the one when asked ‘who are you?’ his hands shiver of fever.
And you;
brother who is set upright on the Paradise with the burdensome of ruined dawn and the chatter of teeth.
You,
who tears up the records of the informants in search of a surname that suits the whiteness of your shoulders,
had a sun of water exploded in your dresses?
Or,
is it war, and your enemies are kids who bargain you with the roar of gold,
with the melodious prophecies as boats tied to piles of books?
Your enemies; brothers, the cooks of the days, are begging the doors towards doors of desperate unrest that refreshes the female in you.
The female shaking in your bowels;
the female, that is you, except for your proofs and suspicion,
except for the absolute proofs of nonattendance written with kicks.
Is it, for this reason,
brother- who guards the masks of tomorrow and its ruins- you jump from a storm that does not know you to storm that you do not know?
Is it, for this reason,
you untie the bandages out of your heart being aided by the dumb spring that pat- with black hands- on your iron that no one will get away from?
Is it, for this reason,
your Baghdad pecks the corpse of your Babel?
Or,
conversely,
your Babel is locked,
with its key in your mouth .
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Notes
(1)Abou Mikhnif: a famous historian who lived at the time of battle of Kerbala and wrote a book that was called Abou Mikhnif’s Book, which is a documentation for what happened in that battle.
(2)Dirhem: a well-known coin used by the pre-Islamic Arabs. It was, till recently, used by the Iraqis before the economic deterioration as a result of the blockade.