Heavenly Summation Poem by Ali Ahmad Said Esber

Up there, up above,
look at her dangling from the sky's throat.
Look at her being fenced with the eyelashes of angels.

No one can walk toward her,
but one can use his forehead or palms, perhaps his navel.

Barefoot, knock on her door.
A prophet will open it, and teach you how to walk and how to bow.

A stage-play directed by the All-Powerful, the Almighty.

And the Lord does thus for all his sons:

— "Here I am, a silhouette of Jerusalem,"
cried a three-headed dummy on the stage, then exited.
"Bait al-Maqdis complained of its ruins to the Lord
and the Lord revealed unto it:
I will fill you with faces that long for you
the way doves long for their young."
— "Fear God, O Ka'ab, how can you say this?
Does Bait al-Maqdes have a tongue?"
— "Yes, and a heart like you."
(reported by Ka'ab)

A stage-play directed by the All-Powerful, the Almighty.
For a long time I have begged bread to criticize salt.
Many times, I heard people ask me, whispering: "Why is death always late in Jerusalem,
while the march of life becomes another death?"
And "how can a head be imprisoned in the cellar of the words that it invented?"

Truly, the Unknown becomes deceptive in Jerusalem,
and He is the master of all deceivers.

In a corner, in the farthest reaches of my desert,
a gazelle weeps.


Translation: 2013, Khaled Mattawa