Sargon Boulus: The Dream of Houses

 

[“Hulm al-Buyut” was published 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)]

 

The Dream of Houses

 

There is a street somewhere

lined with houses

Washed by the whiteness of memory

one ceiling after another

I move about inside them

Storming like a night

Fashioning stairs out of my words

Voices too faint to be heard by anyone 

 

Inanna weaves the fog of sleep for me there

with her severed hands

Tonight I am a master over no one

 

I always find the house in the dream

I open the door

All that furniture devoured by distances

Beyond the reach of memory

Its first names lost

The stream is still flowing since childhood

into ditches

That old woman, Nanunta Nana,

dangles her toes with their yellow toenails in its waters

We come to guide her to her dilapidated hut

beyond the river

Slowly we walk her to the end of the neighborhood

Her old dress flowing in the wind

[Trabslated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon]