Railroad
The glass of the subway windows
is foggy.
Shapes escape across it,
as if from a demon,
and are sorted out behind us as “bygones.”
The shrieking of the wheels on the rail.
The appearance of the next station,
at the bend of a tunnel
full of wailing.
A few vagabonds on the platform
gulping alcohol from bottles hidden in paper bags.
It is the same void rising
from night’s end in any city
overstuffed with the living and the dead:
Paris, Berlin, London, New York.
The end of the west.
The end of the line.
The end rail.
A Pouch of Dirt
Um Muhammad,
the fortuneteller,
the woman from whose thin neck
dangles what initially appears
to be a necklace,
but is nothing but a black leather pouch.
She said
it contains
a handful of the homeland’s dirt.
She sat on a stone bench,
at the Hashimiyya Square,
in Amman,
with thousands of others,
waiting for a visa,
to any country.
She said
that when
she crossed the border,
she knew
that she might never see it
again in this world.
Therefore,
she will carry it,
like a yoke,
wherever she ends
up.
Wherever she ends
up, she will carry
this black pouch
of dirt.
From Azma ukhra li-kalb al-qabila (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2008)
Tr. Sinan Antoon