In verse, words of war and peace
By MIKE WILSON
Published September 17, 2006
A new book gathers literature from what President Bush famously called "the axis of evil" - Iran, Iraq and North Korea - and other politically outcast nations.
The New Press book, called simply Literature From the "Axis of Evil," was compiled by the editors of Words Without Borders, an online magazine of international literature (www.words withoutborders.org). The book was "born in conscientious objection" to Bush's rhetoric, the editors say in a foreword, and is meant "to stimulate international conversation through literature."
Twenty writers are represented. This poem is by Salah Al-Hamdani, an Iraqi who has been living in exile in France for 30 years. He wrote it after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was translated from the French by C. Dickson.
- MIKE WILSON, assistant managing editor/Newsfeatures
BAGHDAD, MY BELOVED
You needn't crucify yourself
either on the edge of a page
of history that is not your own,
or to atone for the dead born of your suffering
for nowhere is there a cry to soothe your pain.
You needn't crucify yourself on the banks of the bloody torrents
that gush from your body,
as the Euphrates bares the secrets of its soul
at the dawn of a new defeat.
I know,
no wound can justify war.
You needn't crucify yourself at the end of the day,
when you have not concluded your prayers
over the fallen palms
for there can be no honorable killer.
You needn't crucify yourself for the ashes of disaster
for the tombs of your Gods,
or for the beliefs of a dying humanity.
Baghdad, my beloved,
neither father, nor son, nor God,
no prophet crowned by the church will save your soul,
neither the one from Mecca,
nor the prophet of those who refuse
to share olive branches in Palestine.
Here is my war notebook
years of exile
folded into a suitcase;
abandoned far too long to the dreams of the condemned.
Here is my share of victims
my share of moon
my harvest of emptiness
my share of dust, of words, and of cries.
Here is my sorrow
like a comma barring off an ink mark.
Baghdad, my beloved,
I was squatting in a corner of the page
Sheltered from barren days
far from bloody rivers
that swept away the names of the dead
and people's silence.
Baghdad, my beloved
sitting like a Bedouin in a mirage
stretched along my shores, I cherished my own death shroud
far from the cross, from the hand of Fatma
and the star of David
far from their books, from their wars
wandering through the sandy dunes
from the wasteland to the town
I drag my body from season to season
and you from the couch to the mirror,
from my bedroom to the street
between my writing and my loneliness
far from their cemeteries,
from their martyrs, from their morgues.
Baghdad, my beloved,
you did not stand shivering in the doorway of the ruined days,
a whole civilization geared to killing
has robbed you of your innocence.
Baghdad, you who never submitted to Saddam, the brute
you have no reason to groan
at the simple revelation of that iron fist
those who busy themselves about your agonizing body,
those "liberators," become his henchmen.
Baghdad, my aching heart,
my father, a laborer, never knew joy
my mother lost her youth in the mirror
and the sole witness to my
first heartbroken sobs upon your breast
is the blowing sand,
the starry sky and God's gaze as prayer is being called.
Madinat al-Salam
city of peace
love in the essence of the written word.
How I wish today
that man had never discovered fire
and I curse him for tramping on through his own deafening din.
The earth that gave me life is being put to death today
oh! mother! Let me return to your flesh
So I might listen to the beating of your soul
and drink in the murmur of your breath.
- March 25, 2003
Word for Word is an occasional feature excerpting passages of interest from books, magazines, Web sites and other sources. The text may be edited for space, but the original spelling, grammar and punctuation are unchanged.