"Ila Sayyid al-Walima" appeared in Sargon Boulus` posthumous collection `Azma Ukhra li-Kalb al-Qabila (Another Bone for the Tribe`s Dog) (Baghdad and Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2008)

To the Master of the Banquet

If you are a master

give us some bread

a drop of medicine for the sick!

You, who call yourself a master,

give to those who walked

in all these funeral processions

bewildered in the dream of disaster

for whom a cloud passing through the sky of slaughter

or a child’s skull, light as a paper boat

is sufficient reward

for their daily prayer

For them

spread a white sheet

a page in a book no one has written

The pure gravy of pains

sopped bread in grief broth

The roots of days extending

to the cellar of mushrooms and water moss

in the darkness of a head

Dizzy under bombing

under your huge military boot

And let the meat roast!

Let the sheep’s stump turn

over the quiet fire of greed

until the skewer is red

in your hand!

And let this banquet

be lean

like the seven cows

in Pharos’s dream!

Let this banquet. . .

Let it

be!

Translated by Sinan Antoon