Rococo and Other Worlds: Selected Poems

I Was Not Given Life in Such Plenitude

73 I Was Not Given Life in Such Plenitude I was not given life in such plenitude My rivers always reached me through the adversary’s ranks I always drank others’ leftover dregs I had to leave a season empty for the rains The one who mentioned me in his will never went barefoot in the rains I do not know whether he’s the same with him in her arms whose mother begged mercy of horsemen and all her living days who kept turning her face from the horse’s steaming nostrils I do not know whether he’s the same whose mother had bound him in the cradle From my mother’s arms and my cradle I would continually fall Because I was born in a well which never saw water and began living in a house Made with the broken rafters of a boat I made a boat of reeds and rowed it with stone oars 74 On the desolate shore of her city I sowed a crop and harvested one The ivory moon stands guard on lilies Her jars of wax and honey she guards Who is to tell if the ivory moon in my sky as well she hadn’t discovered like the North Star she did for me and had the old canal dug I know how her father transforms from a trinket-peddler into a tradesman how in the ballroom on my way to ask her for a dance I join the queue before charity-givers blowing on the horn Though I am the one on wet steps who is for blocking the sun’s way— even on the day when those who see fire turn to stone To the vat if the grapes are transferred from the vine Her valleys are not sapped Their wool not shorn Say to her that To some irate god a prisoner was sacrificed 75 And It was the time When mothers throw their first-born in front of racing chariots that I was brought into a burnt city Admirable are the cities in the name of girls founded, that are burnt in the name of gods Admirable are the girls in hands sticking out of ripped graves who lay the first pick of the fruits If poetry could save love With my poetry I’d have joined the two ends of the sea But with the pardon in my hand the functionaries of her god are demolishing my sanctuary Could this sea be my exile? That would assure me So long as I shall remain on its shores I will exist as son of man Who knows when that ship would sink anchor whose skipper would light a fire for me Who knows when the patron goddess of this city shall grant me her blessing in that I did not make the ranks who marked one lone night in her caravanserais 76 Without supplication when an apple begets fragrance And a serpent, venom without anathema With some burnt metropolis’ stones when a new city is being founded To my land may I return This sea shall retreat and inundate the townships In the tradition of the seas Only one woman would survive in her city— that would be her And one eunuch would survive in her city— that could be anyone Perhaps her heart of any mulberry tree is bereft My heart though is a silkworm I have rid my identity of this worm And along with it I creep “The one not with me now stands against me” ...