Salah Faik`s "What is a Poem?"

Translated by Suneela Mubayi

Me, vagrant?

No: I took off my shirt and covered pebbles

that felt cold

As I came back from the cars of a stalled train

i chanced on the ribs of cats

upon benches, beneath them

letters forgotten by lovers

one of them left me a question: ”O poet,

What is a poem?“

A poem?

I did not know him

nor how he imagined that I roam here sometimes

It does not matter

what is important is that a poem

is to convince one‘s enemies

or to make them return to their mothers

it is to discover heights in your works

filled with hungry gazelles

and birds‘ feathers lost in valleys and between city buildings

A poem is when their dust

turns into a cloud

and the cloud into a ship on fire

(and how bad the relationship of eagles to clouds appears as they rush to another land!)

even if it sees you sitting on a boardwalk by the sea

cleaning the dust of your city off your vertebrae

for many years

A poem is when some person or animal, an insect or a snake

tickles you as you lie on the grass

near a path that does not lead to any windmill or anywhere

It is an open umbrella a dead man tossed away outside a graveyard

as he advanced toward his grave

surrounded by naked thieves

A poem is me disguised in the clothes of a miner

fired two hours ago

- here he is in the market, buying knives of steel

Or it is me in the garb of a failed saint

thrown out from a town

When I found him scavenging through the municipality building‘s garbage dumps

A poem is an unknown river carrying a boat with drunkards on it, singing

as a noisy ocean makes them vanish

It is my wife talking like a coffee table

My dog crying in a packed circus

It really is me selling hashish in a prison

Then, I unwind in the in the lap of a kangaroo

leaving my mouth open

- a sanctuary for crows.

 [Translated from the Arabic by Suneela Mubayi]