A River Dies of Thirst (5 page)

at the garden door’

they stir the meaning with a soup spoon

And if I whisper: ‘A mother is a mother, when she loses her child

she withers and dries up like a stick’

they say: ‘She trills with joy and dances at his funeral

for his funeral is his wedding’

And if I look up at the sky to see

the unseen

they say: ‘Poetry has strayed far from its objectives’

The critics kill me sometimes

and I escape from their reading

and thank them for their misunderstanding

then search for my new poem.

Like one responding to a hidden inspiration, I listen attentively to the sound of the leaves in the summer trees . . . a shy, soothing sound descending from the far reaches of sleep . . . a faint sound smelling of wheat from an isolated spot in the countryside . . . a fragmented sound divided into improvised sections on the strings of a leisurely breeze, no part too diffuse or longwinded. Leaves in summer whisper modestly, call out shyly, as if to me alone, stealing me away from the burden of material existence to a place of delicate radiance: there, behind the hills, and beyond the imagination, where the visible equals the invisible, I float outside myself in sunless light. After a short sleep like an awakening, or an awakening like a short sleep, the rustling of the trees restores me to myself, cleansed of misgivings and apprehensions. I do not ask the meaning of this sound: if it is a leaf whispering confidences to its sister in the emptiness, or the breeze longing for a siesta. A voice without words rocks me, kneads me and forms me into a vessel which exudes a substance neither from it nor in it, like a feeling searching for someone to feel it.

On this blue day, you stand for a long time on a high mountain and stare at clouds merging together, covering land and sea. You think you are higher than yourself, like a bird existing only in a metaphor. The metaphor entices you to break away from it and look at the empty sky, like a blue desert without a mirage to be seen. Then the metaphor calls you back to its source and you cannot find a way through the clouds.

On this blue night, you see the mountains looking at the stars and the stars looking at the mountains. You think they can see you, so you thank them for their affable company. You are reluctant to emerge from the metaphor in case you fall into the well of loneliness.

We were guests of things, most of them

care less than us when we leave them

A traveller weeps, and the river laughs at her:

pass by, for a river is much the same at the beginning as at the end

Nothing waits. Things are indifferent

to us, and we greet them and are grateful to them

But since we call them our feelings

we believe in the name. Is their essence in the name?

We are the guests of things, most of us

forget our initial feelings, and deny them.

A shawl on a tree branch. A girl has passed by here, or the wind, and hung her shawl on the tree. This is not a piece of information, but the opening of a poem by a poet who is at ease, and who no longer suffers from love, so he has begun to view it – from a distance – like a beautiful pastoral scene. He has put himself in the scene: the willow tree is tall, the shawl made of silk. This indicates that the girl used to meet her boy in summer and they would sit on the dry grass. It also means that they used to lure birds to a secret wedding, for the broad horizon in front of them on this hill is attractive to birds. Perhaps he said to her: ‘I long for you when you are with me, as if you were far away.’ And perhaps she said to him: ‘I embrace you when you are far away, as if you were my breasts.’ Perhaps he said to her: ‘I melt at your glances and become music.’ And perhaps she said to him: ‘Your hand on my knee makes time sweat, so rub me so that I melt away.’ The poet becomes increasingly involved in describing the silk shawl, not noticing that it is a cloud that happens to be passing between the branches of the tree at sunset.

I climb up from this valley, making my own way, unaided. I climb a steep hill to see the sea. I am not borne along by a song, or a misunderstanding with the essence of things. I amuse myself by dodging my shadow and thinking cheerfully about where a rainbow ends, and this distracts me suddenly from my shadow, which has become entangled in a thorn bush and is injured but not bleeding. I bend down to help free it and get pricked by a thorn. I imagine, to begin with, that the drop of blood on my hand is a reflection of one of the colours of the rainbow. But a slight pain in my hand makes me aware that what the sunlight does with a body of airborne moisture is something else. I bind my trifling injury with a paper handkerchief and continue climbing the steep hill to see the sea. But the clouds grow thicker and cover the low ground and the outlying areas and the sea, which has been taken prisoner in one of the wars. Night falls, and the lights of the settlements appear on all sides. When I descend the steep hill into the valley, making my own way, unaided, I remember I have left my shadow hanging on a thorn bush. I don’t know if I am sad or not, as a literary loss such as this is not worth recording. I say: ‘Tomorrow I will climb a higher hill to see the sea beyond the settlements. But I will strap my shadow to me so I don’t lose it again.’

This is a confined land that we inhabit and that inhabits us. A confined land, not big enough for a short meeting between a prophet and a general. If two cocks fight over a hen and their pride, their feathers fly off the walls. A confined land with no intimacy for a male and female dove to mate. A shameful land. A land yellow in summer, where the thorns carve notches in the surface of the rocks to pass the time, even if our poetry says the opposite, and supplies it with anthologies of descriptions of paradise to satisfy the hunger for beautiful things felt by those seeking to preserve their identity. We, narrators of the documents, official and poetic, required to be produced spontaneously, know that the sky will never abandon its many works to give evidence. A confined land, and we love it and believe it loves us, living or dead. We love it and know it is not big enough for brazen laughter, or a nun’s prayer, or to hang washing out of reach of the neighbours’ prying eyes, not big enough for the fourteenth line of a translated sonnet. A confined land with no area big enough for a proper battle with an external enemy, and no hall large enough for people to meet in to construct an extensive preamble to a spurious peace. In spite of this, or because of it, people say that a discontented god chose it as a cave to retreat to, a place to hide from the uninvited guests, who immediately stole our rams’ horns and used them as weapons to keep us away from the door of the holy cave.

There is nothing new. The seasons here are two:

a summer as long as a far away minaret

and a winter like a nun humbly praying

As for spring

it cannot stop

except to say: ‘Greetings to you

on Ascension Day’

While autumn

is merely a place of seclusion

in which to contemplate how much of our life we have lost

on the return journey

‘Where did we leave our life behind?’ I asked the butterfly

circling around in the light

and it burnt up in its tears.

As I wash the dishes I am filled with an invigorating emptiness and amuse myself with the soap bubbles. The water comes out of the tap with a rhythm that demands music. I accompany it with bursts of whistling and a phrase from a nondescript popular song. I play with the lather, which is like a cloud in which seasonal colours gleam then fade. I grasp the cloud in my hand and distribute it over the plates, glasses, cups, spoons and knives. It inflates as drops of water run over it. I scoop it up and make it fly through the air and it laughs at me, and my sense of having time to spare increases. My mind is blank, as indifferent as the noonday heat. But images of memories descend from afar and land in the bowl of water, neutral memories, neither painful nor joyful, such as a walk in a pine forest, or waiting for a bus in the rain, and I wash them as intently as if I had a literary crystal vase in my hands. When I am sure they’re not broken, they return safely to where they came from in the pine forest, and I remain here. I play with the soapy lather and forget what is absent. I look contentedly at my mind, as clear as the kitchen glass, and at my heart, as free of stains as a carefully washed plate. When I feel completely sated with invigorating emptiness, I fill it with words of interest to nobody but me: these words!

‘The spring has passed quickly

like a thought

that has flown from the mind’

said the anxious poet

In the beginning, its rhythm pleased him

so he went on line by line

hoping the form would burst forth

He said: ‘A different rhyme

would help me to sing

so my heart would be untroubled and the horizon clear’

The spring has passed us by

It waited for no one

The shepherd’s crook did not wait for us

nor did the basil

He sang, and found no meaning

and was enraptured

by the rhythm of a song that had lost its way

He said: ‘Perhaps meaning is born

by chance

and perhaps my spring is this unease.’

If someone said to me again: ‘Supposing you were to die tomorrow, what would you do?’ I wouldn’t need any time to reply. If I felt drowsy, I would sleep. If I was thirsty, I would drink. If I was writing, I might like what I was writing and ignore the question. If I was having lunch, I would add a little mustard and pepper to the slice of grilled meat. If I was shaving, I might cut my earlobe. If I was kissing my girlfriend, I would devour her lips as if they were figs. If I was reading, I would skip a few pages. If I was peeling an onion, I would shed a few tears. If I was walking, I would continue walking at a slower pace. If I existed, as I do now, then I wouldn’t think about not existing. If I didn’t exist, then the question wouldn’t bother me. If I was listening to Mozart, I would already be close to the realms of the angels. If I was asleep, I would carry on sleeping and dream blissfully of gardenias. If I was laughing, I would cut my laughter by half out of respect for the information. What else could I do, even if I was braver than an idiot and stronger than Hercules?

The butterfly effect is invisible

The butterfly effect is always there

It is the attraction of mysterious things

which entice meaning, and depart

when the way becomes clear

It is the lightness of the eternal in the everyday

a longing for loftier things

a beautiful brightness

It is a beauty spot in the light signalling

when we are guided towards words

by an impulse within us

It is like a song trying

to say something, and being content

to borrow from the shadows

and say nothing

The butterfly effect is invisible

The butterfly effect is always there.

Staring at the ceiling, resting my face on my hand, like somebody stealing up on a fresh idea, or lying in wait for a gleam of inspiration. After a few hours I realise I wasn’t there on the ceiling, or here on the chair, and my mind was blank. I was absorbed in nothing, in total, complete emptiness, separated from my being, sheltered by a benign absence, and free from pain. I was neither sad nor happy, for nothingness has no connection to emotion or to time. Not a single memory shook me awake from this trance, and no fear of my fate disturbed my obliviousness to the future. For some reason, I was sure I would live until tomorrow. I could not hear the sound of the rain shattering the smell of the breeze outside, or the flutes bearing the inside away. I was nothing in the presence of nothing, and I was calm, trusting, confident. For how lovely it is for a person to be nothing, only once, no more!

Truth is a metaphorical female

when fire and water mix

in its form

Truth is relativity

when blood mixes with blood

in its night

Truth is plain as day

when the victim walks

with amputated legs

slowly

And truth is a character

in the poem

It is not what it is

or its opposite

It is what falls in drops from its shadow.

He woke up all at once. He opened the window onto a faint light, a clear sky and a refreshing breeze. He felt his body, limb by limb, and found it was intact. He looked at the pillow and saw that no hairs had fallen out in the night. He looked at the sheet and saw no blood. He switched on the radio and there were no reports of new killings in Iraq or Gaza or Afghanistan. He thought he was asleep. He rubbed his eyes in the mirror and recognised his face easily. He shouted: ‘I’m alive.’ He went into the kitchen to prepare coffee. He put a spoonful of honey in a glass of fat-free milk. On the balcony he saw a visiting canary perched on a tub of flowers he’d forgotten to water. He said good morning to the canary and scattered some breadcrumbs for it. The canary flew away and alighted on the branch of a bush and began to sing. Again, he thought he must be asleep. He looked in the mirror once more and said: ‘That’s me.’ He listened to the latest news report. No new killings anywhere. He was delighted by this peculiar morning. His delight led him to the writing desk, with one line in his head: ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain.’ He was filled with a passionate desire to make poetry, because of a crystal clarity that had descended upon him from some distant place: from the place where he was now! When he sat at the writing desk he found the line ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain,’ written on a blank sheet of paper. This time he didn’t just think he was asleep. He was sure of it.