TRANSLATION: SARA HAMID HAWASS
On my last point,
my ship got lost,
and I don’t want Noah
to tell his people :
I was perished,
and my ship was sunk.
I want him to write,
in his notebooks :
he was a lover.
He resisted the deluge.
He didn’t run away as a mouse.
He saw the fire in the distance,
then the water,
was transformed into a road of gold.
You have a smell,
that I follow.
I go to the last string,
of the earth’s night.
I name the kiss,
the kiss of my soul.
I bundle the world,
in the belly of my hands.
I throw it behind me,
to cross the birds’ sea
and write my eternal song
Who draws my map,
except your hands,
your minarets,
and the fire of your tongue.
Who will immortalize,
my memory,
other than flowing water,
that opens the door of the star,
and creates higher tree
The wet bird has a story,
Only Sulaiman and Ahmad realize it,
when he reaches the sun,
with his fingertips.
The bird has a birth certificate, an ID card,
and a passport.
He prays, performs hajj,
and barely reads.
He deactivates the effect of sorcery
with the amulets of feathers.
He forgets his parents.
He doesn’t know if he was an orphan
or whether they picked him up from the street
When I write you,
when I am with you,
I don’t get busy,
I go to the door,
because I don’t carry a key.
In my tradition the lock,
is ignorance of the skies of my meaning.
The language doesn’t get enough of letters,
and it doesn’t die.
It is reborn in my hands,
and I am reborn in your hands.
I am not ambiguous,
to the extent that a butterfly
gets confused in understanding me,
or to the extent that the sky doubts,
the name of my soul.
Only when I love,
I grant myself,
until I have nothing left but you.
I open the box,
until the sea runs out of words.
So I throw two stones of doubt,
and two arrows of the perfume of qualms.
The present, the future, and yesterday,
are empty,
and I am empty.
A way towards me,
travelling to a hesitant woman,
and searching for the lost gold,
on the wrist of a ”singular” woman,
who became a ”plural”.
The empty is empty,
and the full is a language,
in the dictionary of delusion.
He sleeps in doubt.
In some garden,
I choose a fruit.
I sculpt my dreams,
over its maps.
In some window,
I throw it over your bed.
It carries my scent,
my wind and my basils.
That’s the message,
of my soul,
and the messenger,
of my love.
I walk with your feet,
with your scent that foresees,
with your sleeping whiteness in its serenity,
with your first rain,
with one tongue,
and two towers,
I seek refuge in them,
whenever a cloud,
yearns for my finger.
My poem does not bring me closer,
because you are nearer than,
the sky of my fingers.
My poem is my language,
when I shut up in amazement.
I became an earthquake’s death,
ruining me every second
from your hands.
My poem is my body.
They are my revolution,
my address of my kingdom,
and my sea to you.
Ahmad Al Shahawy (b. 1960), is a poet, novelist, critic, essayist and journalist from Cairo. He is the recipient of UNESCO Literature Prize in 1995, and Cavafy Poetry Prize in 1998. He was awarded a fellowship in literature from the University of Iowa, USA, 1991.
