Wolf's Eye
Published: 03:11 PM,Nov 01,2021 | EDITED : 07:11 PM,Nov 01,2021
The following are translations of poems from Zahir Al Ghafri’s collection: “Whenever an Angel Appeared in the Fort”, (Beirut: 2008):
The Poet, the Mute Woman and the Sun
Signs go after the poet to the bottom of the tavern
He walks as if searching for the world's map
His steps will take him to that point
To that place
To discover again world's injuries
As if that's what he's really short of!
This man
The man who roamed horizons
Walked with the deluge
Till it overflowed from his eyes.
But only Sidora can tell
That the poet is too tired today.
...
And there's that mute woman
The woman who cries without tears
She complains
She begs the customers' sympathies
As if she talked to the dazzling sun
That day, that afternoon.
She's ready to stand before the poet
Saying with all clarity
Like a Scandinavian winter
"I'm the tall lady".
She's been enslaved
Till her tongue escaped her.
He saw in her eyes
Those words she couldn't say:
"The life you want you can't find".
Malmo my dear poet
Is but a false lesson.
From here
Ibn Fadhlaan passed as a war prisoner
In the pirates’ ship.
Wolf's Eye
Take pain with the power of betting
With the power confusion
The confusion of a blind man before a passing cloud
The confusion of Gilgamesh
Before the flower in the snake's mouth.
When life beckons
You find no track of either doors or windows.
The walls have cracked
The town has completely disappeared.
There
Under pearl's towers
You'll see in the wolf's watchful eye
Your entire life's map
The sign of innocence.
You won't
You won't
You won't go farther than this, you won't see
You won't see farther than the window
You won't even see that fountain
The fountain one tries to drown in
To be reborn.
You want to test destiny at its edges
You're most probably a dead man
Walking in the dark
Singing the while of his long exile.
You won't go, you won't see
The angel won't come for you
In the fort.
Here the adventure ends once and for all
Here, time is exposed naked.
Light's Lake
I talk to this woman
Who no longer sees me
For her eyes are looking there
At what's behind the window
At Narcissus in a haunted lake
(Perhaps where man strives to meet
His half death)
I talk to her
Beg her
But she turns not.
She probably wants to see
How light ascends the grass of a lost life.
She sings again of her long exile
Waits here under ice for a moment
More transparent than her nakedness
Waits for a heron to jump from her fancy's lake
To bring her joy.
When she gets tired
When the window frame's laden with her ideas
She turns back to me.
I can see in her eyes her past life.
* Sidora is the goddess of wine in the epic of Gilgamesh (the translator).
** Malmo is a city in Sweden (the translator).
*** Ibn Fadhlan, an Arab scholar, was sent in 921 by the Caliph of Baghdad to Eastern Europe. He left a detailed account of his travels (the translator).
**** Gilgamesh, the main character of the Gilgamesh epic, was the king of Uruk, Mesopotamia. He's believed to have lived some time between 2800 and 2500 BC (the translator).
The Poet, the Mute Woman and the Sun
Signs go after the poet to the bottom of the tavern
He walks as if searching for the world's map
His steps will take him to that point
To that place
To discover again world's injuries
As if that's what he's really short of!
This man
The man who roamed horizons
Walked with the deluge
Till it overflowed from his eyes.
But only Sidora can tell
That the poet is too tired today.
...
And there's that mute woman
The woman who cries without tears
She complains
She begs the customers' sympathies
As if she talked to the dazzling sun
That day, that afternoon.
She's ready to stand before the poet
Saying with all clarity
Like a Scandinavian winter
"I'm the tall lady".
She's been enslaved
Till her tongue escaped her.
He saw in her eyes
Those words she couldn't say:
"The life you want you can't find".
Malmo my dear poet
Is but a false lesson.
From here
Ibn Fadhlaan passed as a war prisoner
In the pirates’ ship.
Wolf's Eye
Take pain with the power of betting
With the power confusion
The confusion of a blind man before a passing cloud
The confusion of Gilgamesh
Before the flower in the snake's mouth.
When life beckons
You find no track of either doors or windows.
The walls have cracked
The town has completely disappeared.
There
Under pearl's towers
You'll see in the wolf's watchful eye
Your entire life's map
The sign of innocence.
You won't
You won't
You won't go farther than this, you won't see
You won't see farther than the window
You won't even see that fountain
The fountain one tries to drown in
To be reborn.
You want to test destiny at its edges
You're most probably a dead man
Walking in the dark
Singing the while of his long exile.
You won't go, you won't see
The angel won't come for you
In the fort.
Here the adventure ends once and for all
Here, time is exposed naked.
Light's Lake
I talk to this woman
Who no longer sees me
For her eyes are looking there
At what's behind the window
At Narcissus in a haunted lake
(Perhaps where man strives to meet
His half death)
I talk to her
Beg her
But she turns not.
She probably wants to see
How light ascends the grass of a lost life.
She sings again of her long exile
Waits here under ice for a moment
More transparent than her nakedness
Waits for a heron to jump from her fancy's lake
To bring her joy.
When she gets tired
When the window frame's laden with her ideas
She turns back to me.
I can see in her eyes her past life.
* Sidora is the goddess of wine in the epic of Gilgamesh (the translator).
** Malmo is a city in Sweden (the translator).
*** Ibn Fadhlan, an Arab scholar, was sent in 921 by the Caliph of Baghdad to Eastern Europe. He left a detailed account of his travels (the translator).
**** Gilgamesh, the main character of the Gilgamesh epic, was the king of Uruk, Mesopotamia. He's believed to have lived some time between 2800 and 2500 BC (the translator).