Tonight
When I entered my apartment
The stairs were lying like tired men after a hard day's work
The door a yawning mouth
My TV was listening intently to the sports newscast
And
Like a ******* woman, the couch was sitting on the floor  
Hardly breathing the used air
The curtain tickled the cheek of the window……
Swaying gracefully above
My books slept like babies on the hands of the bookshelves
The dining table was listening to the whispers of her chairs
The lamps were winking at to each other
The fan was busy flailing her arms indifferent
In my apartment
The life looks the same as I left it  
Everything is normal
No,  
It is more than normal
Strange…….
No one missed me?

When longing becomes madness
And everything is silenced but my heart,

I tiptoe in fear that my eyes may see me.
I tiptoe into your clothes
In my anger toward
You I neglected them.

I brush off the dust of desire.
I smell them
Searching for your dew
or a drop of your scent.

I press between the muscles of your shirt
To quiet my pains
And regain the balance of my soul

So free me from my vows
Because I often do this.

The Mother she waves farewell to her son now how getting ready to go to the war,
And the soldier he was running down towards the gate of the war,
And I a little girl watching from my window my grandmother shed tears when she waves farewell to my father and I sigh for them.

Every time my father is late from the front line
Sickness strikes my mother
and I tour with her the hospitals of Najaf.

I write to him ‘come back to us now,
Make your sergeant read my words: I am about to die’.

He returns my letter, laughing:
‘We are the amusement of the blindman’.

Oh, you River of Jasim, you tore my years
Between my father’s assumed victories
And my mother’s wishes in the emergency room;

They used to plant hope in her mind
By sticking on the glass door,
Two notices confirming: (awaiting death certificate).

Her heart ages so fast
And I ***** from hearing the chants.
Every time the presenter says ‘Victory is on the horizon’,

My grandmothers’ eyes rise to the ceiling -
She hides a mocking smile.

With rage I scream at the screen ‘no victory’s coming’.

She whispers: ‘god is generous’.
‘You sound like my father when I asked for new toys’.
She quietens and we contend,
Awaiting his return before a new battle,
Fearing that a last fight may end the life of a dove.

Far from the possibility of my death – like the rest of people –
And the body becomes compost for a tree
Some of it attaches to the wheels of a car
Or a bird feels greed for a piece of meet
So it leaps with its beak toward me…

Or the street cleaners sweep it along
I become as good as abandoned debris

Or the broom could strike me to the pile to burn
I say:
Far from the thoughts grow in the pathways of the head
If I didn’t find you
Would I have survived?

Between two wars you came.
You mediated
And lit the fire of a new love.

And we began to spread ourselves between two suns
One for me
And the other for your eyes when the roads vanished
And we only fell out over the A
When it wanted to insert itself
Between the W and R.

We told each other I love you.
The wars are made beautiful with songs.
The songs wipe the blood from the wars’ lips.

We’re never far from its grip.
We can exchange with it our stay
And I was as I always was
Loving your letters and always want them.

You, my soul mate,
You, the voice of my voice,
You, the dotting and un-dotting of my letters
the teacher says:
she would remove my sorrows
and heal my tender soul?
I said:
I will make flowers of you;
And I had forgotten the greenness of an evening,
after the drought of my femininity.
Return to me then
So that we can hate this imposter
This idiot
The image is like a blonde
Forgotten by the aged.
Forgetting that our sky
Is black despite his existence,
And red despite his clinging to the tails of a dubious morning’s veil
Come back
So we can hate him
This traitor
Over the uniformed streets he looms like a policeman watching.
My finger tips and your fingertips
Come back again,
So I can show you my essence
I your notebook
Come back to me then,
So I can tell the apples in the basket
Like they told me about you.
translated by Dikra Ridha

I gathered the pores of my being
And came to perfume them with your own fragrance
Only to discover that you are an oleander -- a rosebay
While in the memory of unease and apprehension
I trace some features that resemble no one but you
An image has its own dimensions
And, when hopelessness assails me, I have roads
That never cease to pull and lead me toward you
And while in the nook of anxiety
I fancy a preordained timing
For events that never materialize
The image draws near
And I talk to it
About the tons of heavy separation
That oppress the seasons of my life
I have recited you as rain
Yet your lightning never came near me
Alienation gathered thick
Translated by Mahmoud Abbas Masoud