poetry

…and for some reason I can’t quite recall now he moved a little away, turned his back to me and stared at the river and said: I have nothing left to give you except this: and pointed to the water then wiped my face with his hands

I became alert and imagined I was in a garden in Baghdad whose fence I had passed by when I was a kid… and there was in the dark a fishing boat a soft paddle transmitting the scent of sparks from across the river quiet sounds coming from the brothel, and all this seemed to me like breathing… what I don’t see as it has gathered

I rose and looked around and there I was alone and the river before me, with two maidens in it, one black, the other white and whenever I slept or was distracted he would come, sit before me, talk to me and I would listen, then he’d wipe his hands with my face and I’d awaken, transported from one land to another land one time to another time…

until I reached the Tigris bank that night where the two maidens were and I realized the state I had been in, and longed for those I’d left behind

so I composed these lines for the occasion:

I raise your secret to all expose mine to man and jinn I light a fire of jasmine and chase a dream of fleeing mirth I gather behind you the crowd’s shadow a salaam of vanishing to the vanished and in pleasure I am alluring and in sleep I see the invisible as if I were your radiance and you my whirling spell I played and spun the soul of life as one seeks a plaything and let loose prophetic horses and rode drunker than a drunk so here I am before you a triumph brought to the victor you’re all I have as I’m paraded the pleased around his benefactor

I elevated him higher in my prayers and embellished his favours then remembered what he had told me as he was bidding me farewell:

‘as for that which you did not ask me about it’s your secret, no one else’s and it doesn’t concern me I neither help you with it nor release you from it’

and I had asked him about all things but this!

he had tutored me when I was a kid, I would repeat whatever he said three times before the rooster crowed, I would listen then repeat what he had said twice and by the third time I’d add to it my own.