Suzanne Alaywan's The Gazelle's Throw

[Suzanne Alaywan was born in 1974 to a Lebanese father and an Iraqi mother in Beirut. Because of the war, she spent her childhood years and adolescence between Andalusia, Paris, and Cairo. She graduated in 1997 from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University of Cairo. She has written thirteen poetry collections. The selection of poems below comes from her latest collection The Gazelle's Throw (2011). Her poetry and paintings are available on her website: www.suzanne-alaywan.com]

(Am) waiting for you

With the utmost despair can afford

with the least measure of my shadow

 

I trust the rain

 

like a gardenia flower

a well illuminates me

my life is ink on a cloud

 

my step behind me

I am my mistakes

 

night is a pure piece of anxiety

and each bird has the shape of a cross

 

 

 

What is hidden by a breast in its roundness

what keeps the galaxies alive and far

 

what I am unable to perceive intuitively

and there is no guide

to its springs

 

what a cup

discovers in the last drop

and the dreamer

with no regret

 

whereas you misapprehend me and I persist

in my banter

in my frivolity

in the violet's games

 

the interior, where no consciousness entertains its owner

 

 

 

These are my faces

Watercolor on forest

 

with downcast eyelashes

without noses

with mouths indifferent to cherries

 

around them

questions of strangers are hovering

I hang them on their walls

I suggest mirrors

 

My children don't belong to me

your little ones, too

does a river care about

a seal or a successor?

 

 

 

It is a relationship open as a wound

like the one between an ax and a tree

it rises and shines

with day and the first legend

a breath of air makes you fall

and I gather us clay vessels

 

with the pleasure of a lumberjack

you cut off my limbs

and proudly commit suicide

imagining that you are my torturer and killer

 

a fireplace wood

a seat in a café on a sea

a bed in the middle of a room

large and lonely

 

Without you

pain would not have smelted me into papers

I would not have become

all these friendly be

 

 

 

To a Space

my lungs' butterfly

 

for two lines of swallows

my halo

everything I have written

 

without bustle

I leave my images and cages

 

with remains of your sanguineous wine

I drug sick light

I tame insomnia

 

But birds

waken me with insistent melodies

 

On my cheeks

the clown's makeup

the shoeblack in front of me

with his hanging box

a suitcase that does not travel

and the piano who

like crazy

cries and laughs

his half is a waking wing

and his totality is keys

 

music aches me

 

 

 

Reality

with its hammers succeeding on my bones

 

I bow until I become my lap

and when I lift my neck a little

To inspect the void and what I missed

I find the crescent I left shaping into

a full gallows

 

How I cried

So my name grows old

like a messenger rolling loose on a bicycle?

 

It's a moment

the illusion of the time that passes

 

Thus departure has destroyed me

what terrified me

is that we were done a thousand times and more

without me forgetting

once

your name

 

 

 

On a Street from Chestnut Trees

I release it

to disperse what a name can dispel

from the desolation of a stroll

 

to gather the footsteps of my childhood

and follow

the ages and colored stones

I scattered

 

with my palm

I embrace the handle

I shake hands with the past

I forgive it

 

As if I did not leave

 

In the sunny pathway

My siblings are young

they run laughing

 

My mother is young

nervous

captivating

 

my books

my dictionaries

and a perfume bottle whose name I forgot

on the old shelf

 

I name after you

the city's scent after the rain

so that lavish buildings become intoxicated

cars speeding to their rendezvous

kiosks and umbrellas

before closing

 

On rain itself

diamonds in my hair are melting

studding the asphalt and ladders

streaming like sweat

off statues' nudity

 

with birds

I release it high

free from its letters

from the throats' ropes

from the tearful connotations

and the shell of titles

from a cage scattered in my chest

as a gift

I opened impatiently

to touch the essence

solid and genuine as a jewel

 

 

 

A Tower

as a metal beacon

in gear

 

a stream's flicker

a drizzle and Christmas decoration

 

a house

with doors scattered

and locked

 

our windows in the stars' direction

a window

rescued

the planet is my head

on your knee

 

on my somnolence

your eyelashes are mothers

 

unlike the darkness of the velvet

yarns are embroidered

 

with the colors of our desires

 

In our city

in the distant country

all our days are September

and rain and dusk are my words

in an attempt

to describe a lock of your hair

 

 

 

Vainly Trying

to tattoo my sight

with the scene

 

with an echo street

with two bright sidewalks

with a fence of an enchanted garden

with our trace at dawn

in drowse

and tease

 

with you beside me

with your coat

with your green shawl

with a wool hat and gloves

with a suitable smile

 

In vain I try to prolong the moment

as a shadow or a road

 

the eye of the capital is a spinning top

junctions are fixed

and the taxi

without a black sign

moves away

 

[Translated from the Arabic by Gaelle Raphael]