Inaam Al-Hashimi Poet Prose Poetry

The Tree of Descent

The Tree of Descent   
Arabic poem by: Saad Yassin Yousuf *
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
=================================

As she descended from her paradise, 
She said :
Oh Lord,  choose a land for me
Where I would strew, out of my womb, 
Tribes of greenery
So my limb would rise again toward you,
As I dissolve salt 
And conglomerate it to be fresh dates
Praying that dream-doves of the captives,
And the flutter of their wings,
 May illuminate the courtyard of the creature’s inner soul,
If the sun should set within him;  
Then he would realize
How the root becomes hymns, 
And bread
For eyes waiting at gates corroded by the dessert,
And bitten by hankering. 

He said: “I’ve chosen you a witness …”

“I beg your pardon!”
She exclaimed,
“ A witness?!
A witness to infanticide? !!, 
To the bullets as they pass by reiterating the names of their hosts?
And to death as it rains down on the banks of the breasts.??”

Pity tears in her eyes
She questioned bleeding hearts 
With whispers of flush streams
With the woe of the fore waves.
How often they have witnessed
Sadness in the days of butchers 
Who, behind the trunks of deranged time,  
Kept burying the atrocity
of their innocence doves.

The rivers snuffed out the lanterns of their gulls,
And, under the stars of quiescence, 
Slumbered with fainting breath.


Fragments of wars waged by maniac rhetoricians  
Bent all the trunks of joy dancing within us;
Oh, how Mary kept shaking the trunk of the palm tree,
but embers of tragedy kept dropping upon her!

The grass was burnt...
The infant eyes lost their light 
In a clandestine rocking 

,
The “Fao” 
with severed head
 and red shirt
scrambled
Bustling with screams.

The river was waving with the distressed ink shirt
Then, and again, hiding its face and crying
-	O Our Aunt, Our  Aunt,
 Forgiveness…
Our towns
 Are now sand towns
And could no longer be saved 
By prayers.

 ****

Translation by:
Em. Prof. Inaam al-Hashimi (Gold_N_silk)
?April ?14, ?2013


*Saad Yassin Yousuf  is a poet from Iraq

The Original text in Arabic: http://www.alnoor.se/article.asp?id=206108

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