1 – The war is over.
The war is over. But the bombs are still falling inside my head.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have cleaned the window overlooking your house with an electronic
newspaper
And the plastic rose that I put on my brother’s grave would have grown.
The war is over, and the friends who went to the market to buy a fresh death were
killed on the way.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have recycled my friends
For I need second-hand friends.
The war is over, and the dead have returned to their families safe and sound, the
martyrs have returned to their mothers in one piece, mothers have returned to their
houses, houses, streets, mosques, eyes, legs have returned to their owners, fingers
have returned to hands, rings to fingers, schools to children, washing lines to
balconies, lovers to rooftops, my brother has returned to my mother, and I have
returned to Damascus.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have forgotten to remember the war
And remembered to forget it, as the dead forget the general’s features
And the martyrs remember the way home.
The war is over, and all those I knew are dead, or war criminals, or dead war
criminals.
If we were in a virtual world
I would have turned off the war like you turn off the television
But we were born into a bitch of a world
And when people are born into a bitch of a world
Time changes into a typewriter
And the dead become poems.
Comedy footnote:
The genius of Dante lies in his description of Limbo, think about it a little, you’ll
realise immediately that we’re living in the first circle of hell.
(Cut)
* * *
2 – War
I tried to translate the war from a Semitic language to an Indo-European language for
you, and you were hit by shrapnel. I tried to come to your aid and we were besieged
by news bulletins. The Security Council tried to send us smart weapons, and security
men of average intelligence confiscated them, we insulted the Red Cross and the
Vatican objected, we ate the flesh of dogs whose owners had been killed and the
environmentalists objected, we were saved from drowning and the European Right
objected.
How can I describe to you how much this world resembles the beating of skinny
hands on the thick walls of gas chambers in detention camps, without giving you
PTSD? How can I explain the difference between house slaves and field slaves,
without making you confuse Syria with surrealism? How can I say in the same poem
my friends were tortured to death and you are more beautiful than New York, without
Lorca laughing in his grave, or poetry being separated from reality?
Tragedy footnote:
The problem with this world is not that a quarter of its inhabitants go to psychiatric
clinics, the problem is that the rest don’t go.
(Cut)
* * *
3 – Chess
When the wind passed by, it couldn’t find the tree and the axe was looking at me,
while I was lost in translation, calm as a ceasefire, stuck in a blue planet in a remote
suburb of the Milky Way. I saw a gazelle devouring a wolf, blood dripping from her
teeth, I saw barren women suckling foetuses that were born dead, I saw electronic
flies emerging from Twitter and hovering over my friends’ corpses, I saw a country
travelling in a fishing boat, and a man eating his dead brother’s flesh, not
metaphorically as in the Quran, but eating the flesh of his brother killed in a bombing
raid, so as not to starve to death. The wind passed and didn’t find the tree, or the city,
or the country. The dogs didn’t howl, the caravan didn’t move on. My wife the widow
looks at me, and the war is clean like a game of chess. Barrels of oil rise in price and
barrel bombs of TNT fall on cities, planes lick school textbooks and suck children’s
fingers, while I am silent like a European citizen who enjoys the privileges of the first
world and asks with the innocence of a domesticated wolf, which is harsher: the
Swedish winter or the Arab spring?
Absurd footnote:
The New York Times says milk is white, Paul Celan says milk is black, my mother
says there is no milk!
(Cut)
* * *
4 – A metaphor from a virtual world
Dante was right. This comedy that we are living is divine, or to be fair, let’s say that
it’s at least 97% divine, otherwise how do you explain the fact that everything around
us resembles a metaphor from a virtual world!
Flowers have sex via bees!
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian!
We are happy because the USA hasn’t dropped the atomic bomb on Tokyo!
A dictator’s supporters demonstrate to demand the banning of demonstrations!
I love you!
God sells lands full of milk and honey!
Finland is the happiest country in the world according to the World Happiness
Report!
The cross you wear round your neck is no more than a Roman instrument of torture!
Tragicomedy footnote:
Since everybody is going to die in the end, the death rate in Syria and Sweden is the
same.
(Cut)
* * *
Photo Credit: Cato Lein
Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian-Syrian-Swedish poet born in Damascus in 1979 and settled in Stockholm in 2008, he now lives in between Berlin & Stockholm. He has published four poetry collections in Arabic and his work has been translated into many languages. He has collaborated with other poets and artists and his poetry has been part of work by US artist Jenny Holzer and German musician Blixa Bargeld. His latest collection Adrenalin, published in English by Action Books 2017 in Catherine Cobham’s translation. He was granted the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program award scholarship and is now based in Berlin.
Catherine Cobham is head of the department of Arabic and Persian at the University of St Andrews and has translated the works of many Arab writers, including Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Fuad al-Takarli, Yusuf Idris and Hanan al-Shaykh.