#middleeasternjournal

[middleeasternjournal]

[notjustcookies]

The Small Vases from Hebron - Naomi Shibab Nye

Tip their mouths open to the sky. Turquoise, amber, the deep green with fluted handle,   pitcher the size of two thumbs,   tiny lip and graceful waist.

Here we place the smallest flower   which could have lived invisibly   in loose soil beside the road,   sprig of succulent rosemary, bowing mint.

They grow deeper in the center of the table.

Here we entrust the small life,   thread, fragment, breath.   And it bends. It waits all day. As the bread cools and the children   open their gray copybooks   to shape the letter that looks like   a chimney rising out of a house.

And what do the headlines say?

Nothing of the smaller petal perfectly arranged inside the larger petal or the way tinted glass filters light.   Men and boys, praying when they died, fall out of their skins. The whole alphabet of living,   heads and tails of words, sentences, the way they said,   " Ya'Allah!" when astonished,   or "ya'ani" for "I mean"— a crushed glass under the feet still shines.           But the child of Hebron sleeps with the thud of her brothers falling   and the long sorrow of the color red.

Naomi Shihab Nye, "The Small Vases from Hebron" from Fuel.

Source: poetryfoundation

[notjustcookies]

Imagination is the backbone of memory, the muscular fibre that enables us to regrasp our humanity.

Khaled Mattawa

[notjustcookies]

The Speaking Hour - Abdullah al Ryami

Your image Here Fluttering like a stolen shirt And I am in your hands A painting not yet completed The artist died on his way to me After all these years I grow like grass following a storm

I am the grapes of fault And you the vine We haven't pressed enough to last the night The night that forgot to close its eyes The hanging lamps swing against the dark And the knot that binds us is an ancient tree We warm ourselves with its wood I see the scars of my voice on your back And darkness surrounds us like a white eagle who left an egg on my windowsill

Like a clock hung on the horizon When I looked at you I understood how late it was And when I wet my finger the first time In your navel My head turned a full circle You were my neck

My fingers made kites I blew on my hands And the wind was blown I hunt the Cork Oak Through the sea of nights I have been drinking a long time No one came after me Except afloat

Choose winter And the rain is on me Pour me a glass And purse your lips We almost got drunk The night is before us Many paint the morning On our backs Too meagre for two bodies

I am the grapes of fault And you fill me as blood fills  A fresh wound The mirror is behind you As you comb your hair In the white of my eyes

.

Via Poetry Translation Org  (see link for notes on the translation)

[elf-maidenn]

Beirut - a city of myrrh

Rising from the ashes of its former self, A city of myrrh, glistening With a thousand shades Of gold, scarlet flashes On its beak, with which The city of myrrh sings The cry of a beautiful song , The song of an immortal Infinitely flying alongside the sun, Wings blessed by its rays, Heart touched with its warmth Bursting into flames once again As five hundred years pass, And in the city of myrrh, The Phoenix builds its nest