The Resurrection

"Ibn al-Layl" and Wadia Taha al-Najm

(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

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