The Sky In A Helmet Translated by Stephen Watts and Marga Burgui-Artajo
I was bewildered before the bullet - both of us together there beneath the flattened sky, dreading death I gathered my life's pieces into my rucksack .... and portioned it out : for my son ... for my library ... for the trenches (for childhood, an orphaning ... and for my woman, poetry and poverty ... for the war, this chronic bleeding .... and for memory .... just ashes) Now what is left to you of the life you used to carry between bunker and hope always fearing this shrapnel of time. The sergeant said : This is death & it doesn't deal in addition, subtraction so choose a hole the size of your desire this is the time for holes & for heads ... Or ... run for it right now ... from such impossible death ( - for there's no way out ...
the earth is narrower than we thought .... narrower than that miser's palm ... and who'll take the orphan to safety where the horizon goes dark ... and the face of morning blacks out). ........................... No worries I piled together what was left of me and charged ahead .... - but where to .... ?! Between you & death there's an invisible muzzle and the question two small children asked : - "Daddy, when are you coming back .. ?" I turned round ... The sergeant yelled : This is your homeland now ... my heart shuddered, white with weakness I choked with tears of humiliation : - O sky of Iraq ... is there air to breathe I looked everywhere ... Iraq's sky was punctured with shrapnel and it was ......... ............ I tripped on a rock saw my burst boot laughing at me ... ( - No worries ... let the fat clerks who sit behind their desks write about - the fat of the land) .............................. In a room, twenty years ago She used - fearfully - to mend my worn trousers Washing off her shame with her tears .............................. - Father, where is my pocket money ... ?! my friends have gone to school already ... ............................... (My friends have gone to their bullets such destinies are deaf ...) My friends ... my friends ... my fri ... I fell ... and my homeland gathered me in ... and we raced to the barricade challenging death together Which of us will protect - O my homeland - his own head ... ? We have just one helmet ... just one. Baghdad 1986
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