[Muhammad Al-Maghut (1934-2006), was a Syrian poet, playwright, and journalist. He is one of the pioneers of the Arabic prose poem.]

Tattoo

Muhammad Al-Maghut

Now

At the third hour of the twentieth century

Where nothing separates the corpses

from pedestrians’ shoes

except asphalt

I will lie down in the middle of the street

like a bedouin sheikh

and will not get up

until all the prison bars and suspects’ files of the world

are gathered and placed before me

so I can chew on them

like a camel on the open road

Until all the batons of the police and protesters

escape from grips

and go back (once again)

budding branches in their forests

In the dark I laugh

I cry

I write

I no longer distinguish my pen from my fingers

Whenever someone knocks or a curtain moves

I hide my papers

like a prostitute during a police raid

From whom did I inherit this fear

and this blood

scared like a mountain leopard?

As soon as I see an official paper on the threshold

or a hat through the door

my bones and tears tremble

my blood runs away in all directions

as if an eternal patrol of ancestral police

is chasing it from one vein to another

O darling

In vain I try to reclaim my courage and strength

The tragedy is not here

in the whip, the office, or in sirens

It is there

In the cradle. . .

In the womb

Surely I was not tied to the womb with an umbilical cord

It was a hangman’s noose

[Translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon]