As long as we are ruled by madness, hounds
will devour fetuses still in their wombs,
mines will sprout in wheat fields, and even
the crossed light of morning will be eye-fire.
We’ll see the young hanged, wronged
at the dawn prayer. It’s an age witness
to a snarling pig fouling mosques.
When madness rules, there are white flowers
on the ruined branches, emptiness
in a child’s eyes, no kindness, no faith, no
dignity held sacred. All fates futureless,
everything present worthless. As long as madness
rules, the children of Baghdad can only guess
why they wander hunger’s thorns,
why they share the bread of death, why off
in the distance, American Indians
hover in the cold, why greed shouts them down,
every race crawling ghost-hearted.
Through blood-colored streets, between humiliation
and disbelief, crippled shadows creep,
and the madness-hounds howl in our minds.
We are on our way to death.
The children of Baghdad scream in the streets
as Hulagu’s army pounds the city’s doors
like an epidemic; his grandchildren roar
over the bodies of our young.
The wings of wild birds are blood rivers,
black claws claw eyes—all this cracks the silence.
The Tigris River remembers those days, so look
behind the curtain of history—how many
aggressors have passed through the centuries
of our land, and still we resist?
Hulagu will die, and the Iraqi children
will dance in front of Degla. We are not
to be hanged from all corners of Baghdad.
*
A river can be a weapon against injustice on the earth.
A palm can be a weapon against injustice.
A garden can be a weapon.
Among the water, in the silence
of tunnels, though we hate death,
for God and right we will set fire forever
to your refusal that Islam is holy.
Baghdad, ***** by tyranny, your children
are raising flags. Where are the Arabs
and the white swords, wild horses, glorious families?
Some of them were condemned, some
fled shameful, some stripped and gave away
their clothes, and some are lined up in the devil’s hall
to get their share of the spoils.
And people ask about a great nation’s ruins,
but nothing remains of that shining empire
that spans from the ocean to the gulf.
Every calamity has its cause.
They sold the horses and traded in
the knights in the market of rhetoric:
Down with history! Long live hot air!
Death comes to the children of Baghdad
in the smallest toys, in the parks, in restaurants,
in the dust. Walls collapse on the procession of history,
shame upon civilization, shame from a thousand borders.
From the unknown, a missile charges,
“Where are the weapons of mass destruction?”
Will daylight come again after the ****** smile
has been erased, after planes block the sunrays,
and our dreams spurt suicidal blood?
By what law do you demolish our homes,
and flood fire upon a thousand minarets?
In Baghdad, days pass, from hunger to hunger,
thirst to thirst, under the gaze of the master
of the mansion, the thousand-masked face.
Will there never be an end to this nonsense?
The curtain rises: we are the beginning.
To starve people—is this honor?
“To prey upon supplicants”—that’s the glorious slogan of victory?
To chase children from one house to another—the joy of tyranny.
These days, people have the right to humiliation, submission,
death in every atom, and the chronic question,
“Where are the weapons of mass destruction?”
The children of Baghdad are playing in schools:
a ball here, a ball there, a child here, a child there,
a pen here, a pen there, a mine here, a death there.
Among the fragments, the cactus.
There were children here yesterday,
fluttering like pigeons in open spaces.
One of these days, dawn might lighten the universe,
but for now the sun of justice is far below the horizon.
Despite sacrifice, there is a dark gluttony:
some are faithful, and some are sellouts.
Oh nation of Mohammad, my heart longs for Al Hussein.
Oh Baghdad, land of Caliph Rasheed,
oh castle of history, and once-glorious age,
the two moments between night and day are death and feast.
Among the martyrs’ fragments,
the throne of the universe, shaken by a young voice.
The dark night leaves when a new day flows.
Oh land of Al Rasheed, don’t lose hope, every tyranny ends:
a child adores Baghdad, holds a white notebook and flowers,
paper and poetry, some piasters from the last feast.
**
Behind his eyes, a tear that won’t break
but flows like light deep in his heart: the picture
of his father who left one day and never returned.
The child embraces ashes, and stays a long time.
A thread of blood runs through his mouth;
his voice and shed blood are one.
His features washed out; all of this world is separation.
The child whispers, I long for Baghdad’s day.
Who said oil is worth more than blood?
Don’t ache, Baghdad, don’t surrender.
Although there is dissent in this blind time,
there is, in the far horizon, a wave of visions.
Although the dream is distant, it rises. Rise,
and spread my bones in the Tigris River,
so daylight will one day rise over my funeral procession.
God is greater than the madness of death.
Who said oil is worth more than blood?
Translated from Arabic by Fogle and I.