A wakeful shadow in the sea

The trees are observing its anxiety behind the hours

In the yearning of the café

leis an idea of a naked sun

and scythes of an anxious memory

are aging

in the water

Cyprus;

a day with its meaning

obscured with oblivion

and a longing that never repent

nor stops blazing ..

The beauty spot of the olives at dawn

The wheat

The remaining words

in the far distance

And a question the sword steals

Oh Cyprus,

how many times should I read the will?

I am the heart of Aphrodite

Anat is the wings of my suns

She threw me into the wind

to be casted between boats and exiles

and she rested in the hissing of the memories

I never come from the wound of Ishtar

seeking your rose defeated

I was smelling Beatrice perfume .. astonished by Elsa eyes

Reading about Bonaparte crucified army on the fences of Acre

I was stunned by the blossom of madness flowers

In Foucault fields

In my vision was the summer of Lorca

holding the pack of the rivers in the feminine anxiety

observing a wine of a sun in the gypsies’ tattoo

I was reading Marx statement

While cleaning the needle hole in the craving of the rifles

I was captured

by the dancing rhetoric on the steps of the hurricane

I was in love

Listening to the creeks of a woman behind the mountain

spreading the music of her butterfly in the clouds of my veins

Her lust saved me from a deadly nap

waking up feeling the pain of the cloves

pouring like the embers of milk in the breaths of my day

I play with the foxes of her smile and say to Damascus

wait for me!

The camp was deeply filling my irises

Competing with me

in scratching the mirrors of my blood

My blood that’s flooded with long winters and lightening

teaches me how to climb torments,

how to climb the walls and the sudden bullet

I was singing to her step

Drawing my features through the direction’ stabs

I lead her to sit on the bouquets of anxiety

with no sky to roof

her fingers hymns

and her moons when going down

the thorns of the deserts

I was performing my parade

to be in me

And to go toward her lilies on the border of my allurement

I pick what is left from my tomorrow

under the missiles

pulling the collar of certainty to my lines

I could see me

I was beating all the tanks

The wind behind me had no beginning

so i can defend her doors and

go back like who I am …

………………………………………………………………………………………

Anat: Canaanite goddess worshiped in Canaan region in the Ancient Near East, th 2nd millennium BC.

The poet uses different pronouns (him, her..) to refer to different things like (the wing, Cyprus, the lover, the homeland … )

Mahmood Alsersawi

Translated by Kifah Jahjah