خمس قصائد بترجمة من الشاعر الإنكليزي توم ورنر Nouri Jarrah On Reflection To a Greek poet The invaders you wait for outside the poem are behind you in the city: the miller pilfering weights of grain, the one who stole the wheel from the temple, the merchant with his stack of deeds, the judge with greasy hands, the rabid lawyer, the officer of polished medals, the soldier with a shadow on his lip thin and naked in a stranger’s bed, the informer, the lowest, the lowest, who submits reports in the ink of the flag. You wait for them in the upper city, with your anthems, with lofty expectations, with foam in the mouths of spokesmen, with scales of beguiling balance, with banners of the battle, with military brigades, with wheels of war sunk in the mud, and with your homemade honour. The invaders are behind you in the bazaar, in the castle. Al-Hamidiya, how will you speak to the crescent of Ramadan this year? The invaders, mothers wait for them in the fields with jugs of milk and fathers carry plates of food and grandmothers bring embroidery. The invaders, who stir the thoughts of women and turn water to a burning trickle, pass through your waking hours and pass through your sleep. Thus imagination triumphs over the city, clouds of smoke over the mountains, the sleepers in the honey of ideas triumph over those who punch the salt and over transients in the blood of night; how the sleeping soldier triumphs over he who sits awake, how the coward who runs triumphs over the stalwart who stays to hold the wall. The vehement orator, the flexible politician, the scandalous consul, all sing together to the belly dancer tonight, Long live the homeland! Long live the homeland! No one asks for photos of the victims, nor the names of the wounded and the missing. They throw the dead and injured on carriages and dump on them piles of laurels and barley bags. The invaders you wait for inside the poem, in the shadow, are with you in the marrow of the city. A Late Party I hadn’t noticed they were dead – the party-goers thumbing empty glasses – until she rushed through their chatter with a drip of wine down her sugary blouse. Is she now stripped to her bra at the sink, dabbing the stain with paper towels? And tonight, when she is laughing and naked, who is it she will lie with while we pale employees of the payroll are bloodless, adrift in our rooms? A Black Balloon After only a week can I say, I was in London or When I was in London or Oh... it was beautiful, and add, in a snappy way, so cold and so ugly? I’ll conclude, Time passes like a sickness on a bridge. Is a week enough for someone like me to tick off the afternoon’s hallucinations and really test a city, find a way through Siamese streets and read a few pages of Orwell in a crummy hotel in Paddington? The winter cold leads me strolling indoors. I will ask Reception to switch my room for one of those that overlooks the murky canal. London might as well be a cemetery in the sea. Afternoons seem to sum it up pretty well; the black cabs scowl in the road and the men that were heroes of El Alamein wear starched collars and rush to marvelous parties where everyone dances. On the road, in the gray-green park, is a pretty secretary pushing her boss on a swing. His neck is flushed and full, as though pumped with all the blood of Indians and his pale hand grips the string of a black balloon. Pillow Talk before the guillotine before sleep before the hand that plucked is lifted before sleep and a swarm of light before sleep and the burning of the colours flaps blooms and curls from heat breaks from the blood and settles untouched before sleep before fire before the island cracks from the shore Damascus In this little bag that bumps at my shoulder, I carry down a question bigger than Mount Qasioun. The entrance to Damascus is locked and checked; out of reach, the city’s stashed its heart away. Boys who killed themselves left balls of wool; I tie my door, knit jumpers for the dead, wait. Translated by Tom Warner
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 10:41:14 +0000