Classic Poem

I have read my name on a rock
here, in the desolation of the desert,
on a red tablet of fired clay,
on a grave. How
does a person feel when he sees his grave?
He sees it and is perplexed. Is he
alive or dead? For it is not enough
that he should be impressed by what he sees across the sand,
a dusty minaret,
a cemetery,
some vanished splendor,
a minaret from which God's name rang out again and again,
in which a name for God was cut,
and Muhammad was an inscription on a green clay tablet
shining at a great height ...

Now dust and flame
feed on him,
conquerors kick him without boots,
without feet,
and wounds that give no pain, he
bleeds from them,
not shedding blood —
he has died ...
and we have died in him, the dead and the living.
For we are all dead,
I and Muhammad and God.
And this is our grave: a dusty ruined minaret
where the names of Muhammad and God are written
on scattered fragments,
fired brick and clay.
So O grave of God
across the day lie shadows
of a thousand spears and elephants,
the color of Abraha,
and the guide points to another shadow,
the sad disfigured Ka " ba.

I have read my name on a rock,
on two graves, between them the spaces of generations
marking this as a pit for two:
my ancestor's, some sand only
and a black powder left in his grave,
and myself, his son in death
biting with him on clay.

And a cry would float from my ancestor
with the tide,
a cry to fill the shores: " O valleys of ours, arise,
rise up in revolt!
O the blood that rushes through generations,
heritage of our people, now
shatter and smash these chains,
and like an earthquake shrug off
the yoke, or smash it and smash us with it. "
And proudly our God
swayed among the headbands of the heroes,
from wrist to wrist,
from banner to banner.

Yesterday at Dhu Qar
the mighty God of the Ka " ba
armed himself
with battle-dented armor marked with the blood of al-Nu " man.
The God of Muhammad and of my Arab ancestors
appeared now in the mountains of Rif,
carrying the banner of the revolutionaries,
but in Jaffa the people saw Him weep among the ruins
of a house. One day
we glimpsed Him descending from clouds into our land:
He walked in our neighborhoods, wounded, begging for alms.
We did not bandage His wounds.
No believer among us
sacrificed more than bread and charity.

The voices of men at prayer tremble in His elegies,
when they kneel the blood oozes out,
lips are quick to put on the bandage:
with holy verses
dulled by the old wound
that heal our fearful understanding that we shall revive Him,
when the revolutionaries among us
joyously proclaim: " Him shall we redeem! "

A swarm of locusts swooped down out of darkness,
attacking our villages and setting fire to them;
by the waters of Tigris, where the swarm turned back,
with blood and with ink stories are told of it.
The swarm, was it fate that horrified women
big with child so they bore but ashes?
Hooves of the horses, were they not shod
with the crescents of minarets kicked and trampled?
Did the swarm not arrive in Damascus
trailing across her terrains the footsteps
of two lions that were hungry-hearted?
To the hungrier one, Christ it gave
and quenched its thirst at the font of baptism;
but the desert Orient, did it not arm for battle
when the swarm bit the Prophet of Mecca?

Because the swarm was defeated, has it now returned
to inflict punishment?
And because God endures in our villages,
because we have not killed Him?
Because we did not eat Him when we were hungry,
nor for money sold Him as they sold their god
whom they fashioned out of the gold we toiled for?
As they ate him when they were hungry,
the god we modeled for them
out of the bread that was soaked in our blood?

The whores of Paris
make their pillows from Christ's agony,
and in their bowels sterility implants
the dragon's mouth, loudly hissing,
hurling at our lands
armies of iron, horsemen without soul
that move toward Mecca, toward mountain
citadels we have built, or on the slopes
toward Medina.

I have read my name on a rock.
Between two names in the desert
the world of the living drew breath,
as blood flows from heartbeat to heartbeat
From a red tablet of fired clay
standing over a pit
blood
illuminated the features of the land
steadily
naming it
that it may take its meaning

So I know it is my land
So I know it is part of me
know it is my past
that without this land my past is dead
without this past I am dead, walking with her dead.
Is it ours, tumultuous valley teeming with banners?
Is this the color of our past
lit by the windows of al-Hamra
and by a green tablet of fired clay,
God's name on it, written by the lifeblood that remains to us?
Is this the sound of the dawn prayer
or is it the chant of the revolutionaries
rising from our citadels?
Earth has labored, graves have brought back to life
the dead in millions
and Muhammad and his Arab God and the Ansar all rose up:
Our God is within us.