'Reem'
won't come back
for the coachman is dead
and the horse
is contemplating the new situation.
So ponder on your own life
There is a way for salvation
without needing the Barbarians
or the officer
whose neck is long.
If you manage to sneak from the Hall's portrait frame
before its definite fall
You will save your skull from crushing
and the most serious thing is that
you will not be accountable legally
for losing the book of the family archive.
The horse knows
that replacing a collection of stories
by four wooden cracked wheels
is a joke,
since the analysts have proved that
the movement of the table
a millimeter a day
from its original place
is normal
as long as the universe is shrinking
and the black circles around our eyes
is widening
especially that
the criminal had fled the police
after hiding 'Reem' in his pocket.
The fatigued people
can fall asleep
in the balcony of the White House
or they can
explode.
And we,
can stop reading
until the brass plates melt
round our eyelids
that stretched to the moon.
We
-who are not good in calculating-
can pass the time
watching TV
and checking Arabic dictionaries
Na'ata... Na'etun... Naoot
Nasara... Nasserun... Nasiryyoon
Reem: a little deer.
The man,
who crawled on his stomach down form the bridge
still fears the lifts,
The neighbours
are still in the balconies
chitchatting about women and men,
and the broke-down computer
is still down,
when the maid
is feeding the dog rice and meat
for Omar
is still voiceless
if he speaks
the Barbarians would arrive
and the poem would end.
We're pleased
because we have eyes
so we never wonder
at him who desires longer living
yet we have other bets
and necessities.
Don't say
'By God, I'm beat! '
We need to follow the path of the sea gull
And when disappearing from the horizon,
we observe its swimming shadow
on the blue surface,
where a bottle
whose a paper inside
is waiting for our arrival
as we wait for the arrival of the comers.
As for 'Reem',
she is no longer sick
for Iraq has gone
and the man hung his shirt on the clothesline
after he'd perfectly wrung it out
from her residues.