The Resurrection

(1)

Draw near in your dread, O night
Come, O poison winds..
The seas are boiling in my palm..
And that solitary grave..
Has cast out my body..
That body which cast out perfumes for the poisoned flowers.

Resurrection is from the womb of the vast night;
As for the grave, it has given birth to my perfume..
And that great speaking tree
Has stretched its roots beneath my grave
Drinking the perfume of my body
And exacting vengeance on the offender..
Where the silent... blind crow
Shakes its wings.. and wipes its beak
On a sick, palsied branch..

Come, O life..
O mother of deep-rooted pain..
For sleep has died
And been buried in the rock of day.

Come, O evil spirits
O wellspring of anxiety and doubt..
And wrest mercy from death..
For the great tree wishes to uproot itself with its own hands
It does not wish to drink my perfume..

When the autumn leaf falls
Everything fades away..
And beauty is resurrected from the womb of my soul
And the fog scatters and dissolves
And eyelids close upon the world..
And there remains the vast, the infinite... the Resurrection.

"Ibn al-Layl"

(2)

The sun of late afternoon,
Sickly, gaunt,
Tries to veil its pale face..
With a veil of the darkness of night.

And on the plain.. the human beasts lie down
To sink to the bottom of a deep valley
Where a dreadful darkness devours them..
Clothing existence in its mantle..

And in the waves of the all-embracing darkness
The melody rises, intoxicated,
Flowing sweetly in stillness..

This sweet spring
Burst forth from the depths
Then rose, and overflowed.

Its sweetness mastered the sea,
And the nymphs of the waves came forth, swaying,
Anointing themselves with fragrance.

They clothed themselves in the breeze of dawn..
And their trains went caressing the face of the water,
And they put on the dew as pearls
In which the colors of day dissolve.

And on the unknown shore..
I stood apart, alone with myself,
Solitary.. with people all around me.
I feel the light piercing the darkness..

O tomb..
Immortality is your wellspring..
For in you is a part of it..
So let the soul be a ransom for you..

Wadia Taha al-Najm
College of Arts: Baghdad