SHUROUK HAMMOUD

 

 

Carnivorous Cities

 

These carnivorous cities are nothing like me

Their streets changed by the cruelty of the steps of strangers

Blind traffic lights with their eyes gouged out,

Their scents that lost their identity and the breath of their owners

Their naked bus songs that can't cover our souls

Their trees whose shades were forgotten in the memory of the departed

The rivers aged with silence and paralysis,

And their prisons that are open to embrace.

These carnivorous cities are nothing like me

The titles of its remains wave the shrouds of existence

Their thieves' teeth filled with night, with buried dreams of children,

Emptiness slaps on the faces of its hungry windows

The dirty rain with the roar of its warplanes

The clocks on their walls that distorts with rust the face of time

These carnivorous cities are nothing like me

But I am like all their poets: a green song waiting for the wind.

 

When

 

When the night turns into a song

And dawn turns into a tear of dew

When hearts turn into railways,

Love into a look devoid of words

like a grave that no one visits

When the sound turns into background music

And the clock turns into a nest of scorpions

And the clouds turn into a veil for the sun

When the word breaks on the scale music

To become an orphaned letter searching for a meaning's nipple

Darkness awakens faster than light

When screams scatter like pollen

When waiting sleeps on the stairs of time

And when the beginning and the end share the same garment

I check my mirror's memory.

 

SHUROUK HAMMOUD

 

SHUROUK HAMMOUD: a Syrian poetess and literary translator. Award winner of many local and international poetry awards. Her poetry has been translated into 18 languages and published in poetry anthologies and magazines around the world.