Ghassan Zaqtan

The birds' departure from his heart
leaves the plains white
where the story is white
...

Is there still time
to tell her,
Mother,
...

The cart:
still lurches on since grandfather fled
the boggy fields
The family:
...

I ascend the seven levels
Of sleep
In sleep you are
...

He has to return to shut that window,
it isn't entirely clear
whether this is what he must do,
things are no longer clear
...

In Jabal Najmeh, by the woods, the wizard will stop me
by a passage for boats with black masts
where the dead sit before dawn in black garments and straw masks,
...

The one you accidentally found in the mirror

in its dark corner to be exact
was there alone thinking of you

befriending your solitude
...

By morning travelers knocked on her door
but she didn't wake
By noon a bird stirred her
...

Pretexts come with her absence
and with the waiting of boats between
noon and afternoon
...

I'm going to see how they died
going toward that wreckage
going to see them there
...

Evening didn't come without its darkness
we slept roofless but with cover
and no survivor came in the night
to tell us of the death of others.
...

Will the children forgive the generation
trampled by horses of war, exile and preparation for departure?
Will they think of us as we were:
...

The slain enemy
Think of me without mercy in their eternal sleep
Ghosts ascend the stairways of the house, rounding the corners
The ghosts I picked up from the roads
...

The letters in the widow's room
In the straw basket
On the bed purged of sleep
In the intention to fast which lurks
...

How strange are the days of salt
It is as if they belong to others
And like a well-plotted tragedy
Just brought to a close
...

He pointed for us . . .
this way.
And disappeared
...

Nothing's left to say between us
everything went
into the train that hid its whistle
in the smoke that didn't become a cloud
...

As he descends,
As we watch him descend,
As he conveys to us that he is
About to descend
...

What those intend who visit her house
Is palpably felt
So pure, so proud.
...

How I wish he had not died
in last Wednesday's raid
as he strolled through Nazlat al-Bir —
my friend with blond hair,
...