هبوط أضطراري

[حسن رحيم الخرساني]

Hassan Rahim Al-kharsani
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An Emergency Landing
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Shrunken, at the side of the heart,
Without drowsiness
I land down from the earthy shirt.
To corpses which hold me as an eye- witness;
Or maybe as a lung to my country
I lie down under my coffin
Supposing that I am a tomb
For all palm trees!!
The palm trees are the stars of Euphrates and Tigris
The morning is queer!
It is queer like those snakes
Which liberate me
And come to brake down my pulses
With which they have,
And with which sand I feed.
Shrunken, I land down.
I caress the love she-bird
And the table for the fields' air.
I open cities praying
And other cities which prolong invocations.
Definitely,
I withdraw the moon's longing
And the colour of consternation
Opened, I run, like the sky,
Carrying all stars
And eyes.
From the side of the heart,
Baghdad is rising
In her white wedding-dress,
To wipe tiresome off me,
and to scatter her smile in the space,
As a lantern
For the Arab dead.
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Translated into English by
2004
Yousef I. Shughr