glee
BY GHASSAN ZAQTAN (TRANS. FADY JOUDAH)
They stood at the bus stop,
two schoolgirls, a woman, and a wind:
Wind, my hat is made of literary straw,
my coat is tattered, my hankie a rain
The glee in poems trails my steps
and in my hand there’s a pampered world
whose air
sky
and the tenderness
of its youth
the narcissus of its garment
I made
To write a memory I gathered a memory
and to green the marshes I sprinkled friends
over the salt marshes, and was at a loss
with myself, I the conceited, at a loss
with my palm as I collected stones,
fruits and people from the hell of the earth
to return them as poems
that dreams almost leap out of
I was at a loss with myself and with things
as simple as water
A god had kissed me on the mouth and lit up,
he had released me to my name then called me by it,
I stepped down from my body
to look about him and saw and was
at a loss
I visited my poem in its house,
buried its dumb ornament in the dirt
and told words:
Don’t come to me
a line on salvation’s platter, exalted
in anticipation and wailing, primed
for deliverance!
Interlocutors and disobedient they came:
whichever way I tugged at the drunken boat
in my contemplation’s depths, that it might
see me as I walked, I the conceited,
dreaming of giving light
back to the blind, thought
back to the foolish
when I’m only one
who’s merrily walking
in front of the bus
