Grey Poems
By: Ahmad Hussein
Translated from Arabic By: Adib S. Kawar
A Tale
Tonight I return
to graveyard’s memory
and in pain’s manuscripts
piled on shelves I read
about those with who I drank coffee
and peasants’ chestnuts we ate
*
in the Lemon’s tree of charge Coffee shop
over the soil under which our fathers sat
on memory’s neck a rosary I hang
with a bead for each of them
slowly… slowly growing long
the equation is this:
longer live
faster you die
*
When their time come
to on the wall their portraits to hang
and on stones their names to engrave
the graveyard can’t take any more of them
the proprietorship of shade we profaned
in the oak trees shade
in silence they occupied
their new coffee shop
one before the other they arrive
*
between the oak tree
and the lemon tree in the mosque’s plaza
ten minutes in the coffin’s speed
in between them now
a Falasha Moure school
two minutes away from the mosque
but the graveyard
for the dead half of it
now for taxis is the other half
near it is the Oak Cabaret
by a Slavic immigrant it is owned
now Nathan he is called
to customers Russian chestnuts he serves
with drinks
*
The cabaret I visited to Al-Fatehat* to recite
Nathan saw me and knew
with politeness to me he told:
the first Arab you are here to come!
Here I was born, I responded!!!
He smiled, and the Fatehat he left me to complete…!
when finished I got…
the policeman with reverence
that is proper for the place he told me,
with me please come:
“This place is for Jews only!!!
to him I responded
“There are no Jews here…
and no Jewish places here there are…
did this myth you believe?!
“What is there here”, he replied
To him I responded:
“If you don’t know,
What are you doing here?
He replied With steam bursting out of him:
“To the police station come with me…
I asked him:
Isn’t the police station… For Jews only… here?!
*
Later they told me
that he shot me
And he died!!!
By: Ahmad Hussein
Translated from Arabic By: Adib S. Kawar
A Tale
Tonight I return
to graveyard’s memory
and in pain’s manuscripts
piled on shelves I read
about those with who I drank coffee
and peasants’ chestnuts we ate
*
in the Lemon’s tree of charge Coffee shop
over the soil under which our fathers sat
on memory’s neck a rosary I hang
with a bead for each of them
slowly… slowly growing long
the equation is this:
longer live
faster you die
*
When their time come
to on the wall their portraits to hang
and on stones their names to engrave
the graveyard can’t take any more of them
the proprietorship of shade we profaned
in the oak trees shade
in silence they occupied
their new coffee shop
one before the other they arrive
*
between the oak tree
and the lemon tree in the mosque’s plaza
ten minutes in the coffin’s speed
in between them now
a Falasha Moure school
two minutes away from the mosque
but the graveyard
for the dead half of it
now for taxis is the other half
near it is the Oak Cabaret
by a Slavic immigrant it is owned
now Nathan he is called
to customers Russian chestnuts he serves
with drinks
*
The cabaret I visited to Al-Fatehat* to recite
Nathan saw me and knew
with politeness to me he told:
the first Arab you are here to come!
Here I was born, I responded!!!
He smiled, and the Fatehat he left me to complete…!
when finished I got…
the policeman with reverence
that is proper for the place he told me,
with me please come:
“This place is for Jews only!!!
to him I responded
“There are no Jews here…
and no Jewish places here there are…
did this myth you believe?!
“What is there here”, he replied
To him I responded:
“If you don’t know,
What are you doing here?
He replied With steam bursting out of him:
“To the police station come with me…
I asked him:
Isn’t the police station… For Jews only… here?!
*
Later they told me
that he shot me
And he died!!!
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