Complete Poems (22 page)

that this generation might know an artless

happiness, and length of days, and wealth, and wisdom

without base sweat, or servile industry.

But it will never live, this fabled generation;

its very perfection will cast this labor down

and once again their futile toil will begin.

idhâ kân al-kalâm min fi
a, al-sukût min dhahab

—A
RAB
P
ROVERB

“Silence is golden and the word is silver.”

What impious man pronounced such blasphemy?

What blind, mute Asiatic, to blind, mute destiny

sluggishly resigned? Who is the wretched fool who,

a stranger to humanity, outraging virtue,

said the soul’s a chimera, the word is silver?

The only godlike gift we have, encompassing

everything—rapture, sorrow, joy, and love:

in all our bestial nature, the only human thing!

               You, the one who calls it silver, you put no trust

in the future which dissolves the silence, mystic utterance.

You do not bask in wisdom, progress charms you not;

with ignorance—golden silence—you are content.

You are ill. Insensate silence is a grievous illness,

while the warm, the sympathetic Word is health.

Silence is shadow and night; the Word is day.

Word is truth, life, immortality.

               Let’s speak, let’s speak—silence suits us not

since we were fashioned in the image of the Word.

Let’s speak, let’s speak—because there speaks in us

thought divine, unsubstanced discourse of the soul.

               Our pale Misiri

               the sun, with arrows full

of bitterness and spite, burns up and flays,

and wears her out with thirst and with affliction.

               Our sweet Misiri,

               in gladsome festival,

is drunk, forgets, bedecks herself, is gay,

and heaps her scorn upon the tyrant sun.

Glad Sham-el-Nessim, a blameless country fête,

               announces the spring.

Alexandria and her milling streets are emptied.

The good Egyptian wants to celebrate

glad Sham-el-Nessim, and becomes a nomad.

               From everywhere the thronged

formations of the revelers pour out. Khabari

               is full, and dreamy, azure Mahmoudiya.

The Mex and Muharram Bey are full, and Ramleh.

The country boroughs vie to host the carts

in which the crowds of happy people come

               in sober, calm good cheer.

Because the Egyptian, even in his fêtes,

               keeps hold of his sobriety.

He decks his fez with flowers; but his face

is immobile. He hums a droning ditty,

mirthful. In his thought there’s gaiety,

               very little in his movements.

Our Misiri possesses no rich verdure,

               nor pleasant streams nor founts,

it has no lofty peaks with spreading shade.

But it does have magic blossoms which fall burning

from Ptah’s flambeaux; and myrrhs that emanate

               obscure aromas, among which nature faints.

Encircled by admirers the sweet
moganni

               of widest fame is warmly lauded.

In his trembling voice love’s agonies

sigh; his bitter ballad inveighs against

the flighty Fatma or the harsh Eminah,

               or Zeinab, who is so very wicked.

The tents, all shady, and the cold sorbets

               put the swelter and the dust to flight.

The hours flee like minutes, like racing steeds

upon a level plain; their brilliant manes,

gaily spreading out over the fête,

               gild Sham-el-Nessim, the glad.

               Our pale Misiri

               the sun, with arrows full

of bitterness and spite, burns up and flays,

and wears her out with thirst and with affliction.

               Our sweet Misiri,

               in a gladsome festival,

gets drunk, forgets, bedecks herself, is gay,

and heaps her scorn upon the tyrant sun.

Far from the world, poetic magic makes him drunk;

               all the world, for him, is lovely verse.

For her bard, Imagination built a house: strong,

               incorporeal, which fortune will not jar.

You will say: “A cold and futile life. Foolishness

               to think that life’s the pleasurable sounds

of a flute and nothing else” or “Hard-heartedness

               afflicts the man who’s never been worn down

by the pain of life’s travail.” And yet your judgment

               is error and injustice. His nature is god-sent.

Judge not in your reasoned, blind affliction.

The walls of his house are magic emerald—

               and in them voices whisper: “Friend, be tranquil:

reflect and sing. Take heart, mystic apostle!”

The metropolis of Bruges, which of old a powerful

Flemish duke had built and lavishly endowed,

a clock-tower has, with portals all of silver,

which has told the time for many centuries.

Said the clock-tower: “My life is cold

               and hard and gray.

Every day on earth’s the same to me.

Friday and Saturday, Sunday, Monday

are indistinct. I live—but do not hope.

The sole diversion, the sole variety

in my fateful, harsh monotony,

               is the world’s decay.

While I dully turn my hands, as in a stupor,

to me the fraud of every earthly thing’s revealed.

Ending, downfall everywhere. The din of tireless battle,

moanings roar all round me—and I conclude that

All my hours wound; the last one kills.”

The Archbishop heard this brazen speech

and said: “Clock-tower, your talk’s off-key,

unsuited to your ecclesiastic, elevated rank.

How is it that this wicked way of thinking

entered your mind? O heretic idea, absurd!

               An age-old boredom

must have cast a fog around your spirit.

               From the Lord

the chorus of the hours received another mission.

Each one rekindles; the final one gives birth.”

               It irks me not if winter

spreads fog, and cloudiness, and cold outside.

Within me it is springtime, true delight.

Laughter is a wholly golden ray of sun,

there is no garden that compares to love,

all snows are melted by the warmth of song.

               What use is it if springtime

sprouts flowers and sows verdant lawns outside!

I’ve winter in me when my heart feels woe.

The brightest sun is darkened by lamenting,

when you’re in grief, May is like December,

tears are colder than the coldest snow.

Timolaus is the premier musician

of the premier city in all of Sicily.

Throughout this Western Greece of ours the Greeks

from Neapolis, and from Massalia,

from Tarentum, from Panormus, and Akragas,

and from any other cities of Hesperia

whose shores are crowned with Hellenism,

converge en masse in Syracuse

to attend the concerts of the famed musician.

Preëminent in the lyre and the kithara,

he is skilled as well upon the piffero,

the tenderest of tender flutes. He draws

from the douçaine a plangent melody.

And when he takes the psalterium in his hands

its chords bring forth the poetry

of sultry Asia—an initiation

into voluptuous and dulcet reverie,

fragrance of Ecbatana and Ninus.

… … … … … … …

… … … … … … …

But amidst the many accolades,

amid the gifts of many talents’ worth,

the goodly Timolaus is utterly wretched.

Ruddy Samian does not hearten him,

and by his silence he insults the symposium.

An indefinable grief takes hold of him,

grief for his great insufficiency.

He senses that his instruments are empty,

even as his soul is filled with music.

Painfully, persistently he struggles

to find an outlet for the mystic sounds.

His most perfect harmonies remain

silent and concealed inside of him.

The crowd in its enthusiasm marvels at

the very things he censures and contemns.

The clamorous sound of accolades disturbs him,

and amid the gifts of many talents’ worth

distractedly he stands there, the musician.

When justice is devoid of a solution,

when men’s judgment finds no way, and needs

a higher succour and enlightenment,

the judges, feeble, small, fall silent,

and the compassion of the Gods decides.

To the citizens of Athens thus spoke Pallas:

“Your law-court I did found. Neither Hellas

nor another state will e’er attain

another that is worthier. Jurymen,

show yourselves worthy of it. Spurn

unseemly passions. Let mercy

walk with justice. And if your

judgment is severe, let it be pure

as well—chaste, like flawless diamond.

Let your work be a guide to what is good

and noble; and let it manage

prudently. Never foolish vengeance.”

Deep in feeling, the citizens replied:

“O Ladyship, our mind cannot find

sufficient tribute of our thankfulness

for your splendid benefaction.”

                         The goddess,

gray of eye, responded: “Mortal men,

the Divinity seeks of you no recompense.

Virtuous be ye, and take ye no one’s side:

this suffices me. Jurymen, I have, besides,

guarded as my right a single vote.”

Said the jurymen: “Seeing you inhabit

the starry firmament, Goddess, how is it

that you will vote among us here?”

                         “Be not

vexed by this confusion. In my voting

I am temperate. But should there come a moment

when you are sundered into factions two,

some for, others against, then you,

without my leaving the halls of heaven,

will make use of my vote. O citizens,

my desire is that clemency be shown

always to the one who is accused. Within

the heart of your Athena dwells forgiveness:

great, hereditary, limitless,

an instinct from Metis, the coronet

of the highest wisdom in the firmament.”

The poet’s sacred, honorable inkwell,

               you, from whom a world entire comes forth,

every time a form passes close by you

               it comes back with some charm that is new.

Your ink—where did it find those mythic

treasures! Every drop, as it trickles on the page,

    sets yet another diamond for us

    among the jewels of the imagination.

Those words, who taught you them, which you send forth

               all throughout the world, and which thrill us;

our children’s children too will read them still

               with the same emotion, the same fervor.

Those words, where did you find them, which to our ears

               while sounding as if heard for the first time,

do not yet seem to be completely strange—

               our hearts must have known them in another life.

The pen you moisten seems to be a hand

               that goes around the clock of the soul.

It reckons and fixes the moments of feeling,

               it reckons and alters the hours of the soul.

    The poet’s sacred, honorable inkwell,

               you, from whose ink a world entire comes forth,

    
I’m put in mind, now, of how many people will

               stay lost within you, when the deep

    slumber comes one night to take the poet.

The words will always be there; but what strange hand

    will have the power to find and bring them to us!

    You, faithful to the poet, will refuse it.