ALI AL HAZMI

 

ALI AL HAZMI

 

Take Me To My Body

 

A woman said to the traveler: “Take me to the sea,

There, I was born on the passions of waves;

The winds carried me on a journey

Of which I recall nothing but exile,

Propagating in the wasteland of my soul,

No longer does my need for little luck

Aid me with more patience

To toss the embers of my long delay.”

 

A boy says to a girl tucking her fingers

Under the buttons of his jacket:

“Let my desire in your crowdedness

Float a little on the surface of the water

For the sea is wasting our chance

Of finding a refuge in the nostalgic wreath we weaved

In cheerful nights;

Embrace me longer and tighter,

For embraces lull our eagerness for the faraway;

Let my candle die

And light the dimness of this night.

He knew the sky would rain again

In the absence of his hands,

But he didn’t wait!

I fear the sea…

 

Like me, you fear the sea?!

And it is the flute of nature, the plains of longing,

The retreat for the whole universe!

I fear the sea for you, the shore eroding under its feet in all seasons.

We will be weary, I told you yesterday:

“Take me to my body … we repose!”

We will be weary, if the coasts rain us

With thirst salient in its silence,

We will be weary, if distances encircle us

In this metallic apathy, and the dream became for us

Further than a vine in the hands

 

Seamen ask about the sea!

How could they retreat to its saltiness?

After all those years!

What is left for them in its waters?

Except the glistening of seaweeds and bitter exhaustion?!

 

The faraway lands that faded their attempts,

And broke the paddles of their desires,

Nolonger look back

To the fires of their stares whenever they ask

About the wind: “What did it want

From directing the helm of their journey towards languish?”

Those going to the sea lose all the pearls of their souls

When they leave the suns of their joyfulness

In the eyes of their loved ones

The dominance of the salt will be too harsh

On the soul’s gull

If it passes through the shores in petulance,

And responds to a flock of wishes,

Looming on the water’s body

Lightly.

 

She Lost The Keys To Her Desire

 

A lonely woman

Struggles with the whip of autumn,

With hands bare of luck, family, and friends.

The autumn which kept creeping over trees

She hid away from the passers

 

How she fears the past,

And a dream that never visits her in sleep twice.

Whenever she embraces, with her little her hands,

The butterflies of the dawn waving at her,

The palm of absence wastes her shadows in the wind

 

She no longer cares about the goldfinches

Fleeing from the dimness of her terrace.

Life taught her to bend away

From the joyfulness of her femininity, so soon;

To not reach for the ripe fruit on the branches of the body;

To not try to awaken her shivers

At the fall of night.

She lost the keys to her desire

In her waiting for the bird bleeding from her soul

 

With hollow eyes,

So empty of warmth, love, and hopes,

She keeps rowing down a blank river,

Circling her loneliness at the brink of night.

Willingly,

She surrenders herself to the illness of exile

Without paying a single glimpse to the flute

That lulls the embers of her fires,

Faraway.

 

Night is so long,

In the metallic silence of her solitude;

Pains that gaze from the mirror look on her dream,

Flowingly.

 

There’s no clear meaning

In this headache in habiting her head;

For autumn has gone,

And the morning of butterflies is about to regain its footsteps

Towards a shore so far, at the end of the coos.

There’s nothing to prevent the river

From tracking the passage of her anklet

On the nearby hills!

 

 

Could she desire to praise the eyelids of the faraway, again?!

Could she weave a shawl for her cold femininity,

From the sun,

From the new dawn?!

 

Throwing Your Grief

As A Rock Into The Sea

 

In your forties,

Wingless,

You urge the meaning to fly once again,

As though you are powerful enough, once more,

To step over the clouds.

 

Heading towards your own wilderness,

The winds put all sins of the tale upon your shoulders.

Since you stopped at the gates of your past,

With chained legs,

Neither your years returned to the song,

Nor did the gorgeous girls come back

From the trees of childhood jocundly

To your fields.

 

In your forties,

There, near the springs,

Longing takes you towards the deers,

That no more listen to your songs,

When you feel their approaching foot-steps,

And when the bird of words chirps

On a lonely branch in the heart.

You throw your grief like a rock into the sea

And see your face burning

In the furnace of the lost painful moment.

 

In your forties,

When you are fastened

To the flutes on the shawl of a ballad,

Find a dove forgotten in your own travelling meaning.

Do not exhaust the tender melody

With sighs of the memory that circle around your soul

Like a bracelet.

 

In your forties,

The past assumes you are so close to its orchards,

While you are there still stuck in the wilderness of your fantasies.

When you started your voyage

Towards your glittering metaphor,

You paid no attention to the thorny questions

Staring from afar at your feet.

 

In your forties on the roads,

No more you need to fold your shadows,

As you head towards the pleasures of life,

Trying to reach the lost bank of the river.

Memory asks, “When was it when you went bewildered

In the presence of oblivion?”

What would have hurt your innocent past if you stopped

At its noble gates for greeting,

For dropping off the burdens of rejection

That have watered your eyes with thirst of nothingness?”

 

In your forties,

A woman from the past visits you;

Don’t be rude to her flutes

By asking about her distant love stories.

Save her from the deceptive mills,

Restore her to pure joy,

And to her flowers;

Listen to the bird of her soul

Neglected in the trees of absence;

Be like soft rains for her if she goes astray;

Be a metaphorical chord if she smiles;

And be an existential passion,

If she looks at you.

 

But, when you approach her extensive fires,

Be nothing but ashes.

 

ALI AL HAZMI