An Attempt to Fly
 

Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen

   1

The stork flew.

The stork of my childhood

Flew farther and farther.

But the meeting with it

Remained as a dream growing inside me

Like a growing fire in the crater of the volcano.

   2

Alas! my ambiguous letters.

Alas! my lost women.

Alas! my masks that go on uncovering me.

Alas! my years that follow one another

Meaninglessly or almost meaninglessly.

Alas! my nakedness that surrounded me

Like soldiers surrounded an armless man.

   3

In times of black chairs

Dreams to fly lessen every day

Lessen

Lessen

Until they become as small as a sand grain.

 4

Who are you?

What makes me write to you my contemporary Iliad?

Uncover your selfishness

So that I can show you my orphanhood.

Uncover your miserliness

So that I can show my date palm.

Uncover your ambiguity and plots

So that I can show you my clearness and naivety.

Uncover your death

So that I can show my doomsday.

 5

I am no more than a child

Who fell in the sea, the sea of letters.

So he drowned until the letters wept for it.

I am no more than a monk

Who saw a fresh white violet undressing

So he remained trembling all his life.

I am no more than a feather

From  a slain bird.

  6

My stork,

When will you come so I can stop weeping?

When will you perch so I can stop my tears from welling up?

When will you perch so I can get happiness

In your warm beak,

And sense my boyhood

Laughing through the whiteness of your wonderful feathers?

  7

The stork is still hovering around my heart.

My heart which death, hunger and fire have confiscated.

My heart which the dream to fly has confiscated.

So what will I do

I who have no hands to speak with

Nor legs to fly with

Nor lips to remember with

Nor a memory for practising magic

Nor magic for catching my wonderful stork?

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