Five Poems

Five Poems YAHIA LABABIDI Clouds to find the origin, trace back the manifestations. Tao Between being and non-being barely there these sails of water, ice, air – Indifferent drifters, wandering high on freedom of the homeless Restlessly swithering like ghosts, slithering through substance in puffs and wisps Lending an enchanting or ominous air luminous or casting shadows, ambivalent filters of reality Bequeathing wreaths, or modesty veils to great natural beauties like mountain peaks Sometimes simply hanging there airborne abstract art in open air Suspended animation continually contorting: great sky whales, now, horse drawn carriages unpinpointable thought forms, punctuating the endless sentence of the sky. C
2007 The Authors Journal compilation C
2007 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 63 F I V E P O E M S If If there were more than one of me I’d shave my head and grow my beard I’d be a Doctor of Theology In great coat of myth, impermeable to ridicule I’d raise my voice and sing hymns to the Unknown god Another me would come undone voluptuously submit to possessions, deliriously mate with night in vicious delight I would be, in a word, unspeakable indulge an appetite artistically criminal gloriously indifferent to utter: ruin! Yet another me would take to stage part animal, part angel in improbable outfit strike ecstatic pose and fuse with masses Or perhaps, at last, renounce words and self occupy an eye, to better see in silent awe, peripherally But, there is only this ambitious pen, and playpen fencing a mass of miscarriages trembling from time in unquiet blood And I, with reluctant fidelity, am guardian looking over the restless, violent lot for fear of fratricide. 64 L E V I A T H A N L A B A B I D I The Art of Storm-riding I could not decipher the living riddle of my body put it to sleep when it hungered, and overfed it when time came to dream I nearly choked on the forked tongue of my spirit between the real and the ideal, rejecting the one and rejected by the other I still have not mastered that art of storm-riding without ears to apprehend howling winds or eyes for rolling waves Always the weather catches me unawares, baffled by maps, compass, stars and the entire apparatus of bearings or warning signals Clutching at driftwood, eyes screwed shut, I tremble hoping the unhinged night will pass and I remember how once I shielded my flame. A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 65 F I V E P O E M S To Sylvia Plath Sleepwalking she prepared breakfast for her still dreaming children, before breaking fast, to satisfy her appetite no fire needed, she all-consuming flame bravely cowered on the kitchen floor and slaked an antique thirst on vapor laying her dream-tormented head to rest she took premature or belated leave, set out to sea, having found no harbor here. drylands Tell me, have you found a sea deep enough to swim in deep enough to drown in waters to engage you distract you, keep you from crossing to the other shore? 66 L E V I A T H A N ...