An Attempt To Fly Poem by Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen

An Attempt to Fly
The stork flew.
The stork of my childhood
Flew farther and farther.
But the meeting with it
Remained as a dream growing inside me
Like a growing fire in the crater of the volcano.
Alas! My ambiguous letters.
Alas! My lost women.
Alas! My masks that go on uncovering me.
Alas! My years that follow one another
Meaninglessly or almost meaninglessly.
Alas! My nakedness that surrounded me
Like soldiers surrounded an armless man.
In times of black chairs
Dreams to fly lessen every day
Lessen
Lessen
Until they become as small as a sand grain.
Who are you?
What makes me write to you my contemporary Iliad?
Uncover your selfishness
So that I can show you my orphanhood.
Uncover your miserliness
So that I can show my date palm.
Uncover your ambiguity and plots
So that I can show you my clearness and naivety.
Uncover your death
So that I can show my doomsday.
I am no more than a child
Who fell in the sea, the sea of letters.
So he drowned until the letters wept for it.
I am no more than a monk
Who saw a fresh white violet undressing
So he remained trembling all his life.
I am no more than a feather
From a slain bird.
My stork,
When will you come so I can stop weeping?
When will you perch so I can stop my tears from welling up?
When will you perch so I can get happiness
In your warm beak,
And sense my boyhood
Laughing through the whiteness of your wonderful feathers?
The stork is still hovering around my heart.
My heart which death, hunger and fire have confiscated.
My heart which the dream to fly has confiscated.
So what will I do
I who have no hands to speak with
Nor legs to fly with
Nor lips to remember with
Nor a memory for practising magic
Nor magic for catching my wonderful stork?