When a plant rises opens
and declares its
existence
when two atoms seek each other
meet
clash
explode
is it love?
is it Revolution?
You accelerated within me
the notion of death
I was dead
today I’m scared of dying.
in the felicitous night
I did surrender my body in order
to have a soul.
one evening in Ravenna
on the public square
people were whispering and the
absence of cars was
striking
security agents were shooting
at mistaken targets
and clouds were hanging on
our lips
like foam.
You were the most beautiful
I ever had
and that includes:
the Niagara Falls
the Cordilleras of the Andes
the Surat of Destiny
the dawning of light in the
Rain Forest
and the nocturnal journey of
Arthur Rimbaud.
–I told her: I love Rimbaud
–She said: you love a gun runner!
–I said:
I will hit you
with my fists
then write your
funeral oration
vomit my soul
and seal my body
as iron
and not forget your name.
I will take Christ’s place out
of the songs of Resurrection
and give it to those women who go
insane
because they loved more than He did:
more alienated
more naked
and locked in a hell
whose plants are unyielding.
Every woman is eternally a virgin.
Summers darken like your gaze
and eyelashes
we have killed black-winged
adolescents
and looked for you amongst trees
we drank the green branches
and the shadows they made
and the prison’s walls. . .
a single bird slit the air
leaving but a trace
whiter than death.
Greece to Mexico allied itself
in order to furnish the wood
for your coffin
and alone I followed
having stolen from morphine its
powers
and given the color of your
eyes
to the night I had
promised you.
I have given you the wind
which in the trees
precedes the spring. . .
the drops of water
on your bathing suit
when you were fifteen
and I was away
have dried on Army Beach
yes
our lands have risen
between two tortures
between two
seasons
what to wait for if not to die. . .
that day recedes in
front of my blood-stained memory
let us not play with celestial bodies anymore
they die one by one
like you and me.
I would like to make sure
that tomorrow will be
without
that green look that death
turned into stone.
This spring sitting in the
linden tree
has blinded me
I am a vast river tumbling down
light shot up its way
like an angel fallen in love
with green colored
leaves
that tree by my window stands:
a resurrection song to be
heard in my eyes.
Shadows as black as the walls’ whiteness
cover the infinite
depth of the
body
I dashed into a pink storm
and projected into a
dark room
a succession of desires perverted
by the light
you surged as an angel sunk into
bitter pride
and in the small pools
of the avenues
my double has been moaning for
years
my life I told you
is a ripped up truck.
Rimbaud’s incomplete virility
is perfected in the poem
this child lay over
my sweat
in the barracks of Beirut’s
Southern suburb
the sexual drive of donkeys
was tearing apart the streets
of Cyprus
und the balcony of the
house
where my uncle
regularly
was raping his daughter
while I was dreaming of men
with high boots
and women whose skirts
were slit
the leaves of the linden tree
tremble like a battered girl
its branches are snorting
like a horse
give me in the heart of night
those tender greens
and I shall promise you
a happiness
coming from Spain and yet
unknown.
Happiness came from
Smyrna
it bloomed like a
vine in the midst
of the Great Fire
and the sea was as warm as a
bath prepared for a
wedding
and the women still were weeping. . .
a stranger found his way
In the dark spring of my
bed
at dusk
a cigarette was lit
under my window
and Beirut became the bloody
night
that you all know.
Look at the big clouds
which hover above cemeteries
a girl-child wandered
from funerals to funerals
in order to choose the
place and the rite
for her own death
this rite shall be
mine.
My hands knew the grain of marble
and the taste of stone
and tombs as mobile as the sea. . .
o my parents buried under
the uproar of bombs
o my parents disappeared
into the Great Silence
which travels faster than galaxies!
they will never hear the rain
falling outside
this evening. . .
She had eyes which made the sun
shine over my bed
and brought down the rain
I am speaking of my mother…
her teeth were biting at
the maps of Anatolia
she wore rings in the cable cars
of the city
to distract the hungry desire
of men
turning their attention to
her feet
and to her precious stones
my hair was then rising to her lips
I was claiming a kingdom
and was receiving
a maddened kiss
that her lovers envied me
to the hour of their death.
The linden tree is trembling in front of me
as I used to
in entering your rooms
a mountain range spreads itself
on the ridge of the Secret
Valley
I am running on a celestial trail
Between hedges of clouds
or on a beach
hammered with the sun’s power
and I come through green
branches
through the rustling which breaks
the veil
that separates death from life.
You were driving with the nonchalance
that women have when the sing
you didn’t care if it was on
planet earth or the
Southern Star
I had said that you were
sleeping over my
naked body
but it’s not true:
you sleep in a forest whose trees
are but a green wave
having burned their trunks
and lightened the
air
forever.
A reddish and gold glimmer
stares at me
someone’s death is announced
on the telephone
pain moves in a blue haze
the breeze shakes the
linden tree’s branches
happiness never knocks at your door
on your time. . .