A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not **** him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would **** him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how ******, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

Last someday I told him you know soldier you gotta stop saying please. You gotta pull the punches like get off your knees and onto your head and roll away laughing in cartwheels. Get your shoes shined your collar pressed your dogs walked, your **** ****** by women who will tell you they think you’re a riot sort of. Gotta stop counting the ghosts in the hall and the pills every week and the calories burned and the blessings. Eventually you will learn to tie your own **** tie but you’re proud of rolling your own cigars, you’re proud of remembering to water the calla lily on the windowsill. You’ve forgotten most of what you’ve read. You can’t remember the news from yesterday or was it the day before did one of the neighborhood kids get shot or did we go to war again, maybe it doesn’t really matter. Haven’t had a fruit juicy enough in six years and you gotta find a tropical country where the papayas and the sunshine make you melt into puddles and you are the rainy season, you roll ominously overhead. You think you’ll stop staying at the Ritz-Carlton on business trips, you think you’ll check into the Super 8 at three forty-two a.m. and when you open the door the ashtray’s full and there’s *** caked on the wall. When you go to the bar you keep forgetting you want a shot of bourbon or maybe a double of Scotch and you order a g&t; instead. The clouds stay grey and the sky stays tearstained. You remember playing tennis and skinning your knee when you were seven, you remember grinning the widest when you had lost your front teeth. You don’t own a single photo album. In spring when the flowers start to bloom you think you ought to have a daughter so you can read her Maurice Sendak. You’ll get shampoo in her eyes and she’ll be cross, and she’ll only forgive you when you tell her that story your college friends are all tired of by now. You have those thoughts and then you remember to wash your hands. But I said yes gotta stop being a yes-man because that turns into I do and then where are you, on the altar with the sacrificial lamb and a woman and when you slip the ring onto her finger and say this isn’t funny she says you’re a riot sort of. You wanna make it here, then you better learn to eat the locusts and ride a camel and not get angry with the scorpion in your underpants. You don’t get angry, you gotta squish his head between thumb and forefinger before he manages to jab your pecker. You are fifty-two. You don’t feel fifty-two. You don’t feel anything other than maybe an intense dislike for carob bean. You were told to be on the lookout so I said to him I said.

Have you considered the owl?
Excluded from days
like a diabetic warned off fudge

Is the carob of night enough?
Sure, it’s dark, possibly smooth
and those tasty rodents move there

But look at the day
with a head that can turn right round
you’d see every rotten thing

Every bad stroke and selfishness,
every creaky knee and thumb
in clarity, loud

Oh to be the owl

On a good day…..
I love you more than cheap gasoline
Even more than winning a dollar on the extra
I love you more than a pocket full of quarters
And more than finding the last roll of toilet paper

I love you more than finishing the milk before it sours
Even more than using up the bread before it molds
I love you more than Saturday morning cartoons
And more than a rerun of my favourite program

I love you more than getting revenge
Even more than instant Karma
I love you more than watching *** fights
And more than a drag of my cigarette

On a bad day….
I love you more than commuting on public transit
Even more than luke warm bath water
I love you more than a pocket full of pennies
And more than changing my cat’s litter

I love you more than wine that resembles vinegar
Even more than tasting carob when expecting chocolate
I love you more than finding a fly in my soup
And more than a trip to the emergency room

I love you more than taking out the trash
Even more than doing the dishes
I love you more than waiting in long line ups
And more than receiving change from a five for something that cost $4.01

the house mouse squeaks under the heavy wardrobe
crumbs are falling
from grandpa’s black pipe
the whipped cream ice cream is dry in the compote bowl
the clock fell behind with a couple of polar nights

not I
I didn’t care for old things and I seldom dreamed to taste
carob beans to my heart’s content
rag dolls don’t smile but they laugh
their mouth stretched
double stitched with thread
I
it is a word too big for a three years old child
I forgot three years ago how much I loved from this world
I don’t forgive what’s left for me
that triangle in a circle vanished under my eyelids
traveling stars race
between my lungs’ alveolae

before falling asleep
it gets always cold
the postman rings the way he did when I lost my address
where the world had forgotten me
this is something new
the history still repeating itself
in place of the best gift

I still have hopes.

You stare at your book through your circular spectacles— carob eyes hinted with specks of caramel hidden within the fragile glass as your fingers daintily flip through the parchment-colored pages. Your pearly teeth sinks mildly onto your bottom lip, lightly chewing on the soft flesh as your eyes trace every word. With your nose crinkling, your cheeks rubicund, and your messy hair slightly falling just before your eyes; I realized that you were such a wonderful thing to observe so thoroughly, and I realized that maybe, just maybe, I was falling for you harder than I intended to.

I still have hopes that I may be able to tell you how beautiful you are; how you seem so oblivious of my admiration for you— but for now, I could only stare at you and drown in the thoughts of not being able to call you mine.

They ask me about Palestine,
what we have there,
what we live for,
and why it’s so special?

I shake my head,
looking for the words to explain:
We have both the bad and the good.

We have an occupation to oppose,
and to end.
We have checkpoints restricting our movement,
armed soldiers ready to shoot.
Armless citizens
trying to avoid being shot
while protesting the decade-long siege.

We have fighting factions—
brothers, uncles and fathers—
who warn us to keep our mouths shut.
Jails and jailers waiting for us,
if we speak up.
We have users, abusers and losers.
Corruption and patronage.

Hate has invaded us,
but we still have love.

We have an endless, azure sea
that gives us at least an illusion of freedom.
Fields of the world’s brightest red strawberries
and ancient buildings whispering
about a history once noble and proud.
Close-knit families, with faces of children still hopeful and proud.

We have a beautiful capital with a golden dome
that lights with the sun when it appears from the east,
where worshippers gather from everywhere.
Friday’s call for prayers merge into Sunday’s church bells.
In the same capital, we have Muslims, Christians and Jews
who drink the same carob, eat the same hummus,
speak the same Arabic.
White, black and brown tourists come and go,
Smiling and buying from the elders of Jerusalem.
In it, we have mosques, churches and temples,
where those with righteous hearts
kneel to God at dawn and pray
that hate one day will end.

Mohammed Arafat
08-02-20

Accountancy
Sunday I was driving around and had my camera handy
but I was not in the mood, the plain, my little savannah
was and has always been a flat piece of land between
two hills that look as belonging to a desirable queen’s
bejewelled *****.  So I didn’t take any photos instead
I counted trees. When fifteen I worked in an accountant
office, this mainly because my mother wanted me to go
to work in a suit. It was boring work and to relive it
I made individual numbers into people; I was fired and
the suit I had bought on credit was handed back to
the second- hand shop. I went back to school and became
a cook, which after two years bored me too. Back to school
and I became the officers who do the books.
200 bushes and trees before the bridge
My job is superfluous now ships has a few crew and they
are normally  badly paid, Technology it is called.
From the bridge to the village of Benafim I counted 400
olive trees, 245 almond trees and sixteen Carob trees.

Fat woman in a tree

The old carob tree by the roadside had grown big leaning partly
over the road and trucks often brushed against branches which
caused the tree or the person in the tree to scream.
We didn't know a fat woman lived in the crown of the tree it was
chopped down and its timber used to make headboards and
kitchen tables: the fat woman who had lost her tree took abode
in cracks in the wood and she was vengeful.
Those with a wood kitchen table found their food disappearing
and plates unexpectedly fall to the floor; it got so bad that many
got rid of the table and bought a plastic one, which is the nearest
one can find in a soulless product.

For those who had bought a headboard of that tree, it was worst
plagued by nightmares they struggle to get out of and the evil woman
sat on young men's chest till they suffocated.
Not all trees are like that only on those where a fat woman lives and
since she is invisible, it is hard to tell which tree.
( Philippine fairy tale)

Skeleton

My hands have excessive skin
Blood vessels like roots on an old Carob tree
And I try to think of them when shorn of flesh
Folded on my rib cage
Space where the heart used to be
And the hollow soil filled middle
I say to myself what a sorrowful day.

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not **** him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would **** him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how ******, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

A Paradise Lost  
A dream within a dream that became a nightmare
The Utopia that never existed but what he in delusion
Could not let go  
In the beginning when the locals made remarks but wore
A smile he smiled too, when understood her sarcasm
He still smiled thinking it was a sort of humour till he noticed
The hatred as a gleam in eyes were there was xenophobia
Not possible to smile away,
He sought the nature olive trees, flowers and other plants
But the shells of romance and the hope of finding a Nirvana
Had gone after all carob and olive trees takes on sameness
And the flora was full of stone under sparse grass the
Whither in the summer sun and the rivers muddy and lifeless.
There is no happy valley only scorpions and no acceptance
Of the stranger who wanted to be one of them

Nomad of Hades,
I have seen her emerald carriage...
And the treacherous path she walks on lingers with hyacinths and crocuses.

With every step of her yellowish limbs
She casts another hero to her vestigial garden
And she inhales the golden dust
That grows from the carob trees of lust.

She wears her lies in subterfuge
Even Mercury is struck by that ghastly perfume:
And let Uranus scatter more fertility into the seas- so that more maidens will fall under her trees.

Her weeping, her weeping!
We ask what is wrong, but her soul lies sleeping. Dormant, indifferent,
In lucid fantasies she cries,
'Have you any dreams for sale, warrior of Troy?'

These women, these women! Are they not content with the gifts and ways we please them?
'I seek to hold the wind,' she envelopes me with her long hands and pleading eyes.

And this is why I flee today.
I gave her what I could: intimacy and a place to stay.
Yet a pool of water lays before me and brass-stained roses all dark and gay!

Hélas, she has transpired and leaves with no delay!

After Rain

The audacious sun finally showed up, and green was
the winter landscape, I also saw the sun set just behind
the carob tree, where the almond tree first blossom,
asleep under a carpet of wild flowers and snoozed till dawn.
Over the easterly range, which is the first defence against
Spanish Marauders and the rain on its plane, the clouds
were dark blue, perhaps more rain tomorrow?
In fading light, a musical note danced down the phone line,
the first flirt of spring? And should it rain tomorrow I will
not be downhearted, this day will keep me warm for
weeks to come.

used in cosmetics
a chocolate substitute
no caffeine, carob

pods used for fodder            
powder made from pulp of pods
lush carob brownies

Changing  world



Where the woods of unruly domestic trees on
The other side of the road has not always been there
It used to consist of small homesteads and poverty
People left for France or America never came back  
Nature moved back and trimmed olive trees and
Carob trees took on a surreal form the undergrowth
Was left to grow a paradise for animals and birds
The kestrel catches mouse and the eagle catches hares
I know what I see will change not in my time or yours
Nothing is static it should be so if you look at a map of
The Europe you will see how it has changed and in
The middle- east Israel is just an interlude for a bigger
Change that will shape our future if it is for the worst
We will not be there to know.

I like the moments
When my waiting-thee-eyes see thee:
Inside a new rhythm rhymes,
Burns the fire no end
And dies solitude of the soul!
On the carob I feel myself dropped by the angels
And hold me softly thy tender branches,
And the nectareous melodies the bird sings within
And in elation keep me drenched!
With the playing movements of the breeze
Up and down they leap
And I experience the essence of true love!

Rustic Morning
Still, early morning and coarse grass had stopped crying
But the carob tree was still tearful someone had broken its branch
The one that was easy to grab from the lane.
By the stone fence, a mule looked soulfully at me, so I scratched its
Forehead and we enjoyed each other’s nearness, while a cat chased
A rabbit that jumped behind some boulders where it was trapped
The cat came out with the dead animal in its mouth it dropped it and
I imagined it roared than began eating its prey.
Both the mule and I contemplated this rustic happening, we sighed
It began grazing; I walked my way saying: “see you tomorrow old boy.”

Domestic Landscape


There used to be many small farms or homesteads around
Here where I live, they are abandoned now,
Except for some wretched relics unable to move, acres so
Small earth could easily be ploughed by a mule.

Nostalgia is the name of poetry.

Carob and olive trees grow unseemly branches
Looking like a film set in a horror movie.

The neglected has mystery by itself.

Nature is moving back in, animals the kept a respectful
Distance from man, like shy deer
, and wild boars have been seen crossing the road at night.
Housebound flowers too has felt the freedom
Leaving ceramically confined, to the delight of goats.
The hares that people thought had been eradicated,
are competing with the blue rabbit in some clearing.
Beauty beholds, there is the talk of a golf course so players can be close to nature.

Not what you see

It looked an idyllic scene
a farmer with a sweet, little red tractor
was ploughing a feel while his mule now unemployed
stood under a carob tree resting.
The tractor stopped no more fuel, the man went to
the nearest petrol station to buy some more, but a dreamer
walked past gave the tractor pink wings, saw it flew
towards the sun.
The farmer went to fetch the mule that was tired
standing under a tree looking picturesque.
The mule said, is what dreams are made of all
you need is imagination.

if i had to play favorites, you would be first.
even with your egomaniac persona.
even with your snarky attitude.
even with your manipulative words.
you would still be my favorite.
even though you are a bit of a brat.
even though you really don't know how well off you are.
because with those precious, carob colored eyes, and that blinding smile,
how could you not be?

Sleeping sun

The audacious sun finally showed up
and green was the winter landscape; I also saw
where the sun sets, behind the carob tree
soundly and snug under a carpet of wildflowers
the sun snoozes till dawn.
Over the easterly range, which is the first defence
against Spanish marauders and the rain on the plane
the clouds were dark blue, more rain tomorrow.
I the fading light musical notes dance down a phone line,
The first flirt of spring?
Should it rain tomorrow, I will not be downhearted
this day will keep me warm for a week or so.

Dawn of man

Out of the night came the dawn a mild breeze
blow petal off a rhododendron, a magic carpet
on a whitewashed wall sunlight and shadow dance.
The dogs were still asleep, the **** had not crewed  
Quietness, except for an old man fearing his death
his solace is in the day.
A plane across the sky leaves behind tired dreams
of next year’s vacation.
Alfredo is up starting up his little tractor harvesting
carob beans before it get too hot; he used to have
a mule took a long time back then; the mules made
the landscape looks prettier.
I have been here a long time a tranquil bay far from the sea
leave to me soak up the peace before setting sail
for the timeless ocean.