Do Not Seek the Purpose in My Words
by Zain Al-Abidin Al-Dubaibi
translated by Hatem Al-Shamea
Do not seek the purpose in my words,
For darkness has consumed my fingers and my tongue.
The years plunder moments from me,
Forcibly, and their cup overflows with my tears.
This bitter smoke is the echo of my fires,
These storms are the cradle of my sighs.
This vast, inflated expanse is the shadow of a poem,
Brimming with loss and regrets.
And I yearn for the ruins as if they were a part of me,
And the last believer in my steadfastness.
And the patient ones, I am the cover of their book,
And their orphan tears are my tears.
Do not ask about me, for I was not among you,
Alive, nor is my broken self my own.
The pain soars since its arrival,
In my blood, doubt assails my beliefs.
And my name, the traveler chasing a mirage’s sun,
Derives my directions from the root of the sunset.
Fragile as the memory of sand is my image,
To those passing on the shores of my salvation.
And the setting sun, their intuition has intensified,
They sense the past in my gaze.
Slain and starved, they lower their heads,
And bless my footsteps towards the heavens.
And the earth trembles with the rhythm of the apocalypse,
Luring the panting hellish ones to my paradises.
I am formed from the lineages of absence,
My soul and my destiny from its clay.
I befriended the goddess of wandering as a passage,
And accompanied epochs of stumbles.
And I saw lifetimes looming and disappearing,
I demolished them and erected my necessities.
And at the beginning of every desolate life,
I veiled the end of my life with paradise.
A New Home – Nabila Al-Sheikh – trans. Hatem Al-Shamea
