Season of Tears

POETRY Season of Tears Adonis a poem in the voice of Abdulrahtnan al-Dakhil, falcon ofQuraish1 It falls quiet, the call of the wilderness. Clouds traipse above the palms and from the edge of the groves the towers are tinted rose. It falls quiet, the call of return. I ask her, and Damascus does not answer does not come to the stranger's aid. Will he stop here if he comes this way? Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber) was born in 1930 in the village of Qassabin in Syria. The Arab world's lead ing experimental poet for the past sixty years, he is the author of Mihyar al-Dimashq\ (1960; Eng. Mihyar of Damas cus, 2008), Mufradh bi-Sighat al-Jam' (1975; Singular in the plural form), Kitab al-Hissar (1985; The book of siege), and the three-volume al Kitab (The book). Adonis has produced several seminal and highly controversial books of cultural criticism centered on poetics, his poetry has been translated into dozens of languages, and he has received numer ous prestigious awards in the Arab world and Europe, most recently the 'Uweiss Prize (UAE) in 2005 and the Bjorn son Prize (Norway) in 2007. He died without a sound. It's here that he fell into their hands. I live where she sleeps, among her long exhales in the weeping fields in the bed spread by her tears in the small hallway between her eyelids and sky. It falls quiet, the call of return. Of my life, nothing remains in my eye except these sad ghosts. But the trees that weep on the city's ground are lovers who sing my songs. Mirror of endless wandering, change the face of the moon, for my beloved's face is no longer there. Yesterday, we climbed toward that star, saw him naked, saw him clothed and what we saw struck us a face made of dirt. Change the face of the moon, now that her face is no longer there, O mirror of endless loss. It falls quiet, the call of return. I walk and the Euphrates alongside me walks, the trees follow like flags and a pair of eyes from the embers of years. I sway with the swaying waist of the beast I dance with a black star. And the towers are melodies displaced from their scores. My body and its captors are in one land, my heart and its owners elsewhere. It falls quiet, the song of return and the towers are a country of tears. If she'd only known, she'd have wept the Euphrates and its banks of palms. It falls quiet, the song of return. Confused, confused, I own a choked language' that raves, towers I own confused, crucifying day, tempted by a terror in its depth, tempted to rage confused, the shores rob my inheritance, the waves defend my dawn. I sang of gardens and a towering palace while in wretchedness, in attics hid. Tell him who used to sleep on soft cushions that the heights are being punished by a star. Tell him to ride through the specter of hardship for he is now the lowest of men. It falls quiet, the song of return. Wronging myself, I roll my history, slit its throat in my hand, rouse it back to life. I shepherd my eras, torture my mornings. I feed them night, and feed them mirage. I have a shadow that fills my earth 261 World Literature Today and lengthens. It sees, and greens, it burns its past and like me, burns itself. And we live together, walk together, the same green language on our lips. And in the face ofmidmorning light and in the face of death our ways part. It falls quiet, the song of return: I dream of Damascus, of :error in the shadow of Qassiyun,2 a past era stripped of its eyes, of a calcified body, wordless tombs calling out, Damascus die here and let your promises burn, cal ing out, Damascus, die and never return, you chased prey of fattened thighs, woman offered to whomever comes your way, to chance, to a daring wayfarer, sleeping through fever and through ease in the

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