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With a gentle hand,
the storm grasps
the handle of the
world’s door,
like a hesitant
stranger,
it lets itself in
stripping off its
masks
one after the other:
Dropping lightning
into woods,
darkness into
torches,
despair into ships,
the devil into
horse’s hooves
blueness into the
lips of the carriage driver
and throwing me naked
into the jaws of the
night.
The storm
nearly wrenches loose
the stag’s horns,
the waves’ muscles
almost push back the
coastline.
The sea is a team of
phosphorescent horses
whipped by unseen
lashes,
they chomp the
drizzle, the horizons and the stars
and carry in their
flying hooves.
the stench of sulfur.
No boats are hosted
by the sea,
the harbour is a
sheet of shattered porcelain.
Nothing protects the
trembling coast
Not even the foam’s
fur.
Two chairs on the
sand
escape the storm
as if they were two
lame runners
in a race.
The most efficient
tamers of beasts
will not persuade the
jaws of this night to close,
he will not restore
the loosened waves
to the lock of the
guards.
I take refuge in that
house
with the imposing
dome,
merciful arches,
warm blankets
and my grandfathers’
pictures
(worn out at the
edges
in spite of the
solidity of their moustaches),
pictures secure on
the walls
as if they were built
into them.
My grandfather, still
harbouring the illusion
that the world is
fine,
fills his countryside
pipe
for the last time
before the advent of
the helmets and bulldozers!
On the bulldozer’s
teeth
my grandfather’s
cloak gets hooked.
The bulldozer
retreats a few meters,
empties its load,
comes back to fill
its huge fork,
and never has its
fill.
Twenty times, the
bulldozer
comes and goes,
my grandfather’s
cloak still hooked on it.
After the dust and
smoke
has cleared from the
house that once stood there,
and as I stare at the
new emptiness,
I see my grandfather
wearing his cloak,
wearing the very same
cloak,
not one similar to
it,
but the same one.
He hugs me and
maintains a silent gaze,
as if his look
orders the rubble to
become a house,
restores the curtains
to the windows,
and my grandmother to
her armchair,
as if it retrieves
her coloured medicine pills,
lays the sheets back
on the bed,
hangs the lights from
the ceiling,
and the pictures from
the walls,
as if his look
returns the handles to the doors,
and the balconies to
the stars,
and persuade us
resume our dinner,
as if the world has
not collapsed,
as if Heaven had ears
and eyes.
He goes on staring at
the emptiness.
I say:
What shall we do when
the soldiers leave?
What will he do when
the soldiers leave?
He slowly clinches
his fist
recapturing a boxer’s
resolve in his right hand,
his coarse bronze
hand,
the hand that tames
the thorny slope,
the hand that holds
his hoe lightly
and with ease,
his hand which, with
a single blow, splits a tree stump in half,
his hand that opens
in forgiveness,
his hand that closes
on the candy
with which he
surprises his grandchildren,
his hand that was
amputated
many years ago.
Mourid Barghouti
Translated by Radwa Ashour
Published in Modern Poetry
in Translation: (Series 3 No. 4)
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