Two Andaluses

Two Andaluses

Those departers as clouds and crescents

Have left the windows of the homes orphaned.

 

They have left, and the void has never found solace,

The mountains have stopped giving birth to hyacinths.

 

They have left, leaving behind the names that protected them,

Their countenances lost, their faces unidentifiable

 

They carry nothing but a bit of that under whose light

They carved metaphors out of marble.

 

Here they are – leaving and arriving to uninhabitable space

Time itself has abandoned them.

 

They have slipped into the poem, as it closed itself,

And gathered together in piles of memories.

 

The cracks of the night ask them: when? And why?
How? Who? If? And for what?

 

They arrived in the desert on the seventh weeping night,

And they have set up tents of yearning.

 

They are our voice, haunting and obsessive

If you besiege them to limit them; they swell.

 

This salt in our bodies is from them,

We will not be blind to it; nor will we act blind.

 

We cannot, for we are not water, which forgets that it forgets,

And refuses alienation and indigeneity.

 

There is no past to the rivers, no history, nor nostalgia,

Eternally moving forward.

 

The river is alone in having never stopped in her life,

To greet the ruins.

 

It is as if the one who released her towards the inundation,

Made moving backwards itself a sin.

 

Oh friend, Andalus, the place, is near,

Only an arrow’s span away

 

Greet her open doors and enter,

To suggest drinking partners to the wine glasses

 

No worry; leave your eyes in their melancholy,

Two Umayyads yearning for Damascus

 

Do not fear Castille anymore,

She is now far less menacing and confrontational.

 

She told your shadow, as it surrendered: “disappear”

And then return, after your absence, in tatters

 

This is your share in return, so call it

Like I do, “visiting old friends”

 

Oh Friend, Andalus, the time, is very distant,

So be a leader to the forlorn.

 

Granada is unvisitable, because she is a time,

And this time has become shattered.

 

Do not be fooled by the light; above you a star has died,

But her light has not fizzled out yet.

 

The muwashaḥ has rejected its order,

And the hawk which adorned the banners now flutters – a dove

 

Do not ask the doors about you, and say to them:

You are a painting that does not know its painter

 

While you grow old in this echo,

Hanging your days upon the smoke,

Describe to me how you became trapped by lamentations,

So that two strangers may harmonize.

Those departers as clouds and crescents

Have left the windows of the homes orphaned.

 

They have left, and the void has never found solace,

The mountains have stopped giving birth to hyacinths.

 

They have left, leaving behind the names that protected them,

Their countenances lost, their faces unidentifiable

 

They carry nothing but a bit of that under whose light

They carved metaphors out of marble.

 

Here they are – leaving and arriving to uninhabitable space

Time itself has abandoned them.

 

They have slipped into the poem, as it closed itself,

And gathered together in piles of memories.

 

The cracks of the night ask them: when? And why?
How? Who? If? And for what?

 

They arrived in the desert on the seventh weeping night,

And they have set up tents of yearning.

 

They are our voice, haunting and obsessive

If you besiege them to limit them; they swell.

 

This salt in our bodies is from them,

We will not be blind to it; nor will we act blind.

 

We cannot, for we are not water, which forgets that it forgets,

And refuses alienation and indigeneity.

 

There is no past to the rivers, no history, nor nostalgia,

Eternally moving forward.

 

The river is alone in having never stopped in her life,

To greet the ruins.

 

It is as if the one who released her towards the inundation,

Made moving backwards itself a sin.

 

Oh friend, Andalus, the place, is near,

Only an arrow’s span away

 

Greet her open doors and enter,

To suggest drinking partners to the wine glasses

 

No worry; leave your eyes in their melancholy,

Two Umayyads yearning for Damascus

 

Do not fear Castille anymore,

She is now far less menacing and confrontational.

 

She told your shadow, as it surrendered: “disappear”

And then return, after your absence, in tatters

 

This is your share in return, so call it

Like I do, “visiting old friends”

 

Oh Friend, Andalus, the time, is very distant,

So be a leader to the forlorn.

 

Granada is unvisitable, because she is a time,

And this time has become shattered.

 

Do not be fooled by the light; above you a star has died,

But her light has not fizzled out yet.

 

The muwashaḥ has rejected its order,

And the hawk which adorned the banners now flutters – a dove

 

Do not ask the doors about you, and say to them:

You are a painting that does not know its painter

 

While you grow old in this echo,

Hanging your days upon the smoke,

Describe to me how you became trapped by lamentations,

So that two strangers may harmonize.

Original Poetry