By Mahmoud Darwish
Fall 2007 | ArteZine
When the heart has been broken, it cries out: Samarkand
She is the partridge….
***
Can you not weep tomorrow?
Perhaps I can
But does this dew descend
Whenever the road to Damascus finds me
I gather this echo
Just as the lovers gather the tears from the night
I gather this echo
Perhaps
Perhaps
It was a voice and I concealed it
And so the Barada disappeared
***
Samarkand is the pavilion of my displaced spirit
And five directions to my mother’s tear
Samarkand is a silk thread
That suspends the bank of a riverbed
upon the horse carrying the rain
And a voice descending from God
And it has broken
Samarkand is a river bending
Samarkand is the pavilion of my displaced spirit
***
Do you raise this call
On the long, stone steps
To mourn the beyond?
So that I steal my heart suspended above the palm tree
So that I steal the names of my mother
And remember Baghdad before the exodus
On what bridge did the songs cast you
As a casualty, to light up this evening?
On my mother’s breast, I fell
And I concealed the Tigris in a palm tree
that did not reveal my secret
And which casualty
Has returned mourning to you?
They have migrated, all of them
All of them have migrated, my friend, from me, to me
So, is there a guide
That leads us for a step
Or brings us back a step with no beginning
***
When the heart has been broken, it cries out: Samarkand
She is the partridge….
***
Samarkand is fifty women weeping on a threshold
Sketching for the night a form that is seen
Arched bridges from the words of villages
And they have migrated
Stone
By stone
Illuminating their lanterns of worn silver
***
Do you not drink the tears alone
Alone?
Where is the marble of Ibn Abbas
In memories
And where is the expanse of the heart after the sunset call to prayer
And where are the domes, the alleys, and the gate?
In the national museum
And where is Samarkand?
Under Samarkand…
Let me embrace my father in the mirage
For every mirage
Is my father
And every absence is my father
***
Samarkand is what the flowers leave behind to the wind
What the nightingale leaves behind
On a passing moon in the poem
Samarkand is what kisses leave
On a wilting desire…
Samarkand is a rug for a distant prayer
Samarkand is a minaret for the dew
And a compass for the echo
Samarkand is a fleeting description of what collapses out of our love
When we depart
When the heart has been broken, it cries out: Samarkand
She is the partridge….
***
Do you remember how I entered the city?
I broke my last ribs
As an arched bridge
An arched bridge
And when I bent to observe the image of my heart
I saw Samarkand in a lark
And how will you leave
I forget my blood
In the moonlit stones
***
When the heart has been broken, it cries out: Samarkand
She is the partridge….
Slowly, it breaks the promise with the promise
And from the woman, the kisses remain
Goodbye Samarkand
Oh woman, who does not stay and does not go
Goodbye
Goodbye Samarkand
