Trash is Real: The Spokesman

Monday, February 2, 2009

The Spokesman

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on Earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace, unspeakable and perfect.

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Blood and blood, blood in your country,
in my name and in yours,
in the almond flower, in the banana skin,
in the baby's milk, in light and shadow,
in the grain of wheat, in salt
Adept snipers, hitting their target with maximum proficiency.

Blood and blood and blood.
This land is smaller than the blood of its children
standing on the threshold of doomsday like
sacrificial offerings.
Is this land truly blessed, or is it baptised
in blood and blood and blood
which neither prayer, nor sand can dry.
There is not enough justice in the Sacred Book
to make martyrs rejoice in their freedom
to walk on cloud.

Blood in daylight, blood in darkness. Blood in speech.
He says: The poem could host loss, a thread of light shining
at the heart of a guitar;
or a Christ on a horse pierced through with beautiful metaphors.
For the aesthetic is but the presence of the real in form

In a world without a sky, the earth
becomes an abyss.
The poem, a consolation, an attribute
of the wind, southern or northern.

Do not describe what the camera can see
of your wounds.
And scream that you may hear yourself,
and scream that you may know you're still alive,
and alive, and that life on this earth is possible.
Invent a hope for speech,
invent a direction, a mirage to extend hope.

And sing, for the aesthetic is freedom

I say: The life which cannot be defined except by death is not a life.

I Come From There... (by Mahmoud Darwish)

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave snatched by seagulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of words,
And the bounty of birds
And the immortal olive tree.

I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known,
To a returning cloud.
I learned all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learned all the words and broke them up
To make a single word...

Homeland