The dead are many inside me, maybe I became a mobile ceremony, I can no longer accommodate a funeral.
[author title=”Bahaa Iaali” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Bahaa-Iaali-Lebanon-Sindh-Courier.jpg”]Bahaa Iaali, Lebanese poet and translator, born in Bebnine, Akkar in 1995, holds bachelor’s degree in History and Mythology from the Lebanese University, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences. He taught as a trainee lecturer at the Lebanese University before moving to journalism and translation, where he wrote and translated in many newspapers and cultural platforms. He also worked as literary editor at Dar Al-Rafidain Publishing between 2019 and 2020. He worked as a freelance translator, and translated many books of writers into Arabic, most notably Jean Cocteau, Emmanuel Bove and René Bazin. His Poetic Works include ‘Light is the last bird in the sky’ (الضوء آخر عصفورٍ في السماء) published in Damascus in 2017; ‘Concerto for lips lifted by the wind’ (كونشيرتو لشفاهٍ ترفعها الريح) – Damascus 2019; ‘Songs of a village shrouded in fog’ – Long Poem (أغنياتٌ لقريةٍ مضبّبة – قصيدة مطوّلة) – London 2021 and ‘Portraits of a face starved of frowns’ (بورتريهات لوجهٍ يجوّعه التجهّم) – Dubai 2021. [/author]
The dead are many inside me
O stranger!
Step awhile into the lounge of my country house which was also my bedroom, come in it peacefully, holding a cloth and a hose. Clean the windows and the walls gently So that the paint does not wear off:
You will find me there
Silence came to me while going out
And it had my shape.
***
I return a little child
For the first time after the falling of dust
I return back to the day on which I was crying like a crocodile after devouring a zebra:
The dead are many inside me
Maybe I became a mobile ceremony
I can no longer accommodate a funeral.
***
Give me some or all of your grief
Let it sew shoes the size of my feet
To wore out as I go towards the sun!
***
In your bewilderment,
A complete silence remains
And a few glass shatters
That barely punctures the time
For a beautiful smile to cross through
In your bewilderment,
I can barely find a place
For my old explosions that wind have not fallen asleep to their sounds
I barely see the reflection of the war
Like a widow’s eyes, which are poked by
The bayonets of the soldiers’ rifles!
***
A road with many branches
But I only not see from one of them
Where I was going to my youthfulness party,
Sometimes, those branches approach me
And eat me like a French apple
That shines like a mirror
And when I stand up
Timings of the entire universe rest on my shoulders.
The graveyard of time fits in my head then I get older,
Only the old people, who watch me from the balcony of the Infirmary, believe me!
Maybe I looked a lot like them.
***
For me on a day that came before time
I have a bare tree,
Leaves as a delicious meal for the wind
As a pit for the last of the dead,
A bit that could not find any to block it,
As smoke-free cities that surround me,
As manifestations of empty points looking for their delusion,
An echo of the song “Aranjuez mon amour” while Richard was weeping,
As details of things that only fools would think of.
Like the last concerto the cellist left as he felt bored,
As things which eat each other like worms!
______________________
