The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    (“A Palestinian village whose feudal owner sold it for a kiss through a pane of glass…”) Archived Message

    Posted by Subhi on October 12, 2020, 2:23 pm, in reply to "Palestinian prisoner jailed without charge or trial, is on his 77th day of hunger strike."

    The great Qasim whose bats might be more timely, didn't Bobby Sands die after 66 days, 77...that's a long hard fast.



    “THERE WAS A VILLAGE CALLED SIREEN,” BY SAMIH AL-QASIM



    Nothing remained of Sireen after the auction
    apart from you, little prayer rug,
    because a mother slyly stole you
    and wrapped up her son who’d been sentenced to cold
    and weaning – and later to sorrow and longing.

    It’s said there was a village, a very small village,
    on the border between sun’s gate and earth.
    It’s said that the village was twice sold ―
    once for a measure of oil
    and once for a kiss through a pane of glass.

    The buyers and sellers rejoiced at its sale,
    the year the submarine was sunk,
    in our twentieth century.

    And in Sireen ― the buyers went over the contract ―
    were white-washed houses, lovers, and trees,
    folk poets, peasants, and children.
    (But there was no school ―
    and neither tanks
    nor prisons.)
    The threshing floors, the colour of golden wine,
    and the graveyard
    were a vault meant for life and death,
    and the vault was sold!

    People say that there was a village,
    but Sireen became an earthquake,
    imprisoned by an amulet
    as it turned into a banquet―
    in which the virgins’ infants
    were cooked in their mothers’ milk
    so soldiers and ministers
    might eat along with civilization!

    “And the axe is laid at the root of the tree…”
    And once again at the root of the tree,
    as one dear brother denies another
    and existence. Officer of the orbits…
    attend, O knight of death,
    but don’t give in ―
    death is behind us and also before us.
    Knight of death, attend,
    there is no time to retreat ―
    darkness crowds us and now has turned
    into a rancid butter,
    and the forest too is full,
    the serpents of blood have slithered away
    and the beaker of our ablution has been
    sold to a tourist from California!
    There is no time now for ablution.

    People say there was a village,
    but Sireen became an earthquake,
    imprisoned by an amulet
    as it turned into a banquet―
    in which the virgins’ infants
    were cooked in their mothers’ milk
    so soldiers and ministers
    might eat, along with civilization!

    From: Samih al-Qasim. SADDER THAN WATER: NEW & SELECTED POEMS.

    Message Thread: