In Her Feminine Sign Read online

for 100 years.

  I want to skip the problems

  of the twenty-first century—

  water pollution

  nuclear war

  capsized boats

  that carry immigrants

  away from their homelands.

  I may miss important inventions

  and new songs

  and weekends

  when people go out

  on their dates

  followed by one moon.

  I may open my eyes for a moment

  to take a glimpse of the universe in its beauty

  and then close them again.

  But what if my loved ones

  surrounded me

  and whispered in my ear

  one by one?

  I would wake up of course.

  My Poem Will Not Save You

  Remember the toddler lying face down

  on the sand, and the waves gently receding

  from his body as if a forgotten dream?

  My poem will not turn him onto his back

  and lift him up

  to his feet

  so he can run

  into a familiar lap

  like before.

  I am sorry

  my poem will not

  block the shells

  when they fall

  onto a sleeping town,

  will not stop the buildings

  from collapsing

  around their residents,

  will not pick up the broken-leg flower

  from under the shrapnel,

  will not raise the dead.

  My poem will not defuse

  the bomb

  in the public square.

  It will soon explode

  where the girl insists

  that her father buy her gum.

  My poem will not rush them

  to leave the place

  and ride the car

  that will just miss the explosion.

  Many mistakes in life

  will not be corrected by my poem.

  Questions will not be answered.

  I am sorry

  my poem will not save you.

  My poem cannot return

  all of your losses,

  not even some of them,

  and those who went far away

  my poem won’t know how to bring them back

  to their lovers.

  I am sorry.

  I don’t know why the birds

  sing

  during their crossings

  over our ruins.

  Their songs will not save us,

  although, in the chilliest times,

  they keep us warm,

  and when we need to touch the soul

  to know it’s not dead,

  their songs

  give us that touch.

  Tablets

  II

  1

  I close my eyes and see a dot.

  It becomes a spot of light.

  It grows into the size of a person

  who moves into the distance

  until it returns to a spot of light,

  a dot.

  2

  Like communion bread

  your words dissolve in my mouth

  and never die.

  3

  I don’t care under which sky—

  just sing your song till the end.

  4

  The bone-city I am choked by

  is also salt

  also sugar

  also boiling water

  in the kettle without a lid.

  5

  Ask not how many houses were built.

  Ask how many residents remained in the houses.

  6

  The flame opens like a giant plant

  swallowing them one by one

  with their lost-and-found sheep.

  7

  She whose song

  has no beginning

  or end;

  she whose voice

  faded into stars and moons . . .

  Where is she?

  Where is she?

  8

  There are two types of dreams:

  vertical and horizontal.

  Tell me the shape of your dream

  and I will tell you where you are from.

  9

  Fire and light

  both sting.

  We go to sleep when the other half

  of the globe wakes up.

  Night and day

  crowded with dreams.

  10

  Your look

  passes through me

  like lightning.

  11

  The butterfly that flew a moment ago

  over the killed ones

  was a soul

  searching for home.

  12

  Our time together

  has ripened, now

  smashed like berries.

  13

  Can your camera capture

  fear in the eyes

  of the mother sparrow, see

  the broken eggs in her eyes?

  14

  A little air means so much for the bird.

  In the air, a full world extends.

  The clouds gather and then separate.

  The leaves wave to each other.

  For the bird, everything hangs in the air.

  15

  The pomegranate seeds

  scattered with our steps

  were not from heaven.

  16

  My paper boat that drifted into the river

  with the world behind it

  had a special note.

  It may arrive one day,

  albeit late,

  all truths come late.

  17

  Dried leaves

  over there:

  our first yearnings.

  18

  The shoes by the door

  will not fit them when they return.

  19

  She counts the pebbles by her fingers.

  The other pebbles underwater

  are losses outside her hands.

  20

  Specks of sand

  fell down

  from the fingers:

  our people.

  21

  The sun reveals

  a hole in the boat,

  a glow in the fins

  of fish still breathing.

  22

  The day and the night

  divide our steps on the road

  as they equally

  divide the world.

  23

  I was born.

  I write poetry.

  I will die.

  24

  Her shadow

  is still here

  feeding the birds.

  III

  1

  Like the turtle,

  I walk everywhere

  with my home on my back.

  2

  The mirror on the wall

  doesn’t show any of the faces

  that used to pass

  in front of it.

  3

  The dead

  act like the moon:

  they leave the Earth behind

  and move away.

  4

  Oh, little ants,

  how you move forward

  without looking back.

  If I could only borrow your steps.

  5
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  All of us are autumn leaves

  ready to fall at any time.

  6

  The spider makes a home outside itself.

  It doesn’t call it exile.

  7

  Forgotten

  faces of the dead

  as if we had only met once

  through revolving doors.

  8

  I am not a pigeon

  knowing my way home.

  9

  Just like that

  they packed our green years

  to feed a hungry sheep.

  10

  Of course you can’t see the word love.

  I wrote it on water.

  11

  When the moon is full

  it looks like a zero.

  Life is round

  at the end.

  12

  The grandfather left the country with one suitcase.

  The father left with empty hands.

  The son left with no hands.

  13

  No, I am not bored of you.

  The moon, too, appears every day.

  14

  She drew her pain:

  a colorful stone

  settled deep inside the sea.

  The fish pass by

  and can’t touch it.

  15

  She was safe

  inside her mother’s belly.

  16

  The lanterns know the value of night,

  and are more patient

  than the stars.

  They stay until morning.

  17

  Those colorful flowers

  over the mass graves

  are the dead’s last words.

  18

  The Earth is so simple—

  you can explain it with a tear or a laugh.

  The Earth is so complicated—

  you need a tear or a laugh

  to explain it.

  19

  The number you see now

  will inevitably change

  with the next dice roll.

  Life won’t show its faces

  all at once.

  20

  I love you

  in the singular

  even though I use the plural,

  both the regular and irregular plurals.

  21

  The sweet moment is over.

  I spent an hour

  thinking of that moment.

  22

  The butterfly brings pollen

  with its little feet, and flies away.

  The flower can’t follow it—

  its leaves flutter,

  and its crown grows wet

  with tears.

  23

  Some of our tribal members

  died in war, some

  died regular deaths.

  None of them died from joy.

  24

  That woman standing in the public square

  is made of bronze.

  She’s not for sale.

  IV

  1

  I wanted to write an epic about suffering,

  but when I found a tendril

  of her hair among the ruins

  of her mud house

  I found my epic there.

  2

  I didn’t sleep last night.

  It was as if the night

  itself hid in the morning coffee.

  3

  Her life is a game of snakes and ladders

  sent relentlessly back to square one,

  but whose life isn’t like this? She takes

  a breath and throws the dice again.

  4

  The city glitters below

  the airplane window, not because

  of the bones and skulls scattered

  under the sun, but the view

  through the frosted porthole.

  5

  She died, and time changed

  for those she loved most,

  but her watch kept ticking.

  6

  A god carried the burdens

  until the weight persuaded him

  to transfer them to man:

  the new suffering god.

  7

  The map of Iraq looks like a mitten

  and so does the map of Michigan—

  a match I made by chance.

  8

  If you can’t save people

  at least don’t hate them.

  9

  Her bubbling annoys me—

  I can’t understand a word she says.

  So what if I toss her from the aquarium?

  So what if I spill her new world

  with this nasty immigrant fish?

  10

  The city’s innumerable lights

  turning on and off remind us

  we are born to arrive

  as we are born to leave.

  11

  The handkerchiefs are theirs,

  but the tears are ours.

  12

  Women running barefoot.

  Behind them, stars falling from the sky.

  13

  So strange

  that in my dream of us

  you were also a dream.

  14

  He said to me: You are in my eyes.

  Now when he sleeps,

  his eyelids cover me.

  15

  Gilgamesh stopped wishing

  for immortality,

  for only in death could he be certain

  of seeing his friend Enkidu again.

  16

  Some say love means

  putting all your eggs

  in one basket.

  If they all break,

  can the basket remain intact?

  17

  The homeless are not afraid

  to miss something.

  The world passes before their eyes

  as clouds pass over rushing cars

  pigeons miss some of the seeds

  on the road and step away.

  Yet only the homeless know

  what it means to have a home

  and to return to it.

  18

  The wind and rain

  batter us

  without discrimination.

  We are equal

  in the eyes of the storm.

  19

  When I was broken into fragments

  you puzzled me

  back together

  piece by piece.

  I no longer fear

  being broken

  at any moment.

  20

  Freezing in the mountains

  without blankets or food,

  and all they heard was

  no news is good news.

  21

  Their stories didn’t kill me

  but I would die if I didn’t

  tell them to you.

  22

  Before killing them

  they collected their personal effects.

  Their cell phones are all ringing

  in the box.

  23

  We are not upset when

  the grass dies. We know

  it will come back

  in a season or two.

  The dead don’t come back

  but they appear every time

  in the greenness of the grass.

  24

  If yearning encircles us,

  what does it mean? />
  That a circle has no beginning

  and no end?

  V

  1

  Light falls from her voice

  and I try to catch it as the last

  light of the day fades . . .

  But there is no form to touch,

  no pain to trace.

  2

  Are dreams

  taking their seats

  on the night train?

  3

  She recites a list of wishes

  to keep him from dying.

  4

  The truth lands like a kiss—

  sometimes like a mosquito,

  sometimes like a lantern.

  5

  Your coffee-colored skin

  awakens me to the world.

  6

  We have only one minute

  and I love you.

  7

  All children are poets

  until they quit the habit

  of reaching for butterflies

  that are not there.

  8

  The moment you thought you lost me,

  you saw me clearly

  with all of my flowers,

  even the dried ones.

  9

  If you pronounce all letters

  and vowels at once,

  you would hear their names

  falling drop by drop

  with the rain.

  10

  We carved

  our ancestral trees into boats.

  The boats sailed into harbors

  that looked safe from afar.

  11

  Trees talk to each other

  like old friends

  and don’t like to be interrupted.

  They follow anyone who

  cuts one of them,

  turning that person

  into a lonely cut branch.

  Is this why in Arabic

  we say “cut of a tree”

  when we mean

  “having no one”?

  12

  The way roots hide

  under trees—

  there are secrets,

  faces, and wind

  behind the colors

  in Rothko’s untitled canvases.

  13

  Will the sea forget its waves,

  as caves forgot us?

  14

  Back when there was no language

  they walked until sunset

  carrying red leaves

  like words to remember.

  15

  It’s true that pain

  is like air, available

  everywhere,

  but we each feel

  our pain hurts the most.

  16

  So many of them died

  under stars

  that don’t know their names.

  17

  If she just survived with me.

  18

  A flame dims in the fireplace,

  a day slips quietly away from the calendar,

  and Fairuz sings, “They say love kills time,

  and they also say time kills love.”

  19