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Panoramic War-life Scene

Bashar Abdulah - Iraq

 

Preface

This poem is written for the co memorial of those times of war during which most of my friends were severely swallowed by the gigantic creature of Death. Though the few number of the lines used in this poem, it is coming out of a unique theoretical background having an artistic point of view as to the way poetry might best be written and read. This view point which I entitled "Reanimating Silence In Stones" can be well established as follows:

"Cut whatever is not elephant in stone, and you get an elephant" such was the answer given by Michael Angelo to the question of a student of him when asked how best to make an elephant out of a block of stone.

The point here is how a student like this would receive such a complex answer? is it right for him to deal with its direct meaning or should he dive into depths gurgling with wisdom at a time he hasn't yet acquired the proper skill of free diving into atmospheres embraced by rich wisdom ?

Really what Michael Angelo did want his student to perceive was the tickling of the art essence inside him so as his primitive reception of the world might well be awakened. Such a unique type of reception is the only to go through the future certainty in a way presenting the future in the context of the present. It was as if the master had wanted his student to hear from the depths of that answer certain words such as: learn by your own how best to ferret the artist vision out by leaning only against the silent nature of the crude stone in order to capture whatever soaring towards the realm of dreams. For only therein lies the real world and only therein the rules of creative distinction do wake up. But how could the student carry out such a difficult task when the only tools he has for doing it are mere realistic signs such as chisel and hammer strokes ,brush strokes with colors and shades, or linguistic articles to pour down on surfaced sheet of a paper?!

What is required by any artist in the field of art he adopt is to animate the silent nature ,and the way by which he does this is not perceivable by all. Only those conversant with epistemological spheres , courses, and their interrelations with cultures , insights and the tools more proper than other ones for every attempt to go through abstraction in order to recreate its contents in a way vital enough to bring them forms as equivalent to the world being a subject.

Now let's say to the short-story writer cut whatever is not a short story in your mind, and you can get a good short story, and to the poet whatever is not a poem, and you can get a good poem. Then all things can, as to Picasso, shout:"even an inanimate empty bottle." 

But there is a difficult condition here; the area between the source of the idea and the mouth into which the text flows shouldn't be filled with the garbage of life. Artists have been for centuries looked at as human mind inside a strange city. Their art therefore is similar to C.D. Lewis' bird which Noah once sent to bring him a sign of life after the Deluge and returned with a leaf to prove it .But still Noah has to carry out difficult tasks such as leveling the ground, building the house and compromising the old family disagreements.

The artist does look at his own world which all the people around him look at too. Yet when the latter see it in the full of stability , the former sees it a mere ball played with by fingers of the volatility .It is that more realistic illusion , charged enough with modernity of creation and further rapprochement as to the future certainty to bring it all out in one stroke. One wonders what induces an artist to lead such adventure! to be more accurate, what induces the art itself to experience such an adventure! or is such adventure furnished with? Death must be among its contents, yet it is one with no compromise, one with vital action within the logic of Time subjectivity, leaving its objectivity annihilates into the silent nature just as the first chair of Bernard Shaw leaves its uniqueness which all carpenters in the world are left only the opportunity of following its example.

Michael Angelo's answer connoted that his student ought to trace art at some emptiness absolutely as specific as that one Lao Tzu once pointed to in his wise sayings of Tao: Make walls, a door and windows for the room, but you should put in mind that only the emptiness is the proper space to be used. It is that emptiness seen by Bregson as the invisible compactness ,that very one felt inside the crude stone by the innocent nature of the child who shouted involuntarily when saw Michael Angelo put his final touches on a statue representing a lion : O, master tell me how did you know there is a lion inside this stone!!!

Yes, it is that unique emptiness that always await to be trickled by a real skill so as to let its invisible dense contents- hidden beneath the lines of experience- gush forth, whereas the lines themselves are but dead fish only to outfit the beggars, the lazy who live on the leftovers, which a true fisher shuns even mere looking at them. 

The poem

Dedication: To those who brave say ' no' to wars

The beaches do play joyfully with the blueness of 

the sea, yet never would they discover

that the coloring of the sea water

the blueness reflected by the drowned 

..One day

I'll escape to heaven

but I have first to chop

all the threads

 

for I dragging the twilight down to the horizon

do hate being touched by 

the blood splash

      ***

the wind passes and bow

reverently to the vacuum 

left by the charred forest

      ***

As you ,pilot, violate the sound bar

ً،you may cause a pregnant to abort

but never can you cause the well-bred horses

to abort Allah's goodness

ًas you never can

!violate the bar of neighing

      ***

the coalition air fighters

ٍevery afternoon do tear

،the blue shirt of our city sky

ٍwith a patience-made needle

and sympathy-made thread

do we every afternoon darn

.the torn shirt of the sky

      ***

My way

on to Alsayyab's logging

told me the story of the rare camels

he did lead to the daughter of Alchalabi

But the moment a bomb fell down 

the camels changed into horses

and the birds all flew up

      ***

At the time of war

i was head of arrowers

making many kites

to fly them over for training

the soldiers did shoot them with their shoes

:when I asked them

؟why they did not use their arrows

:They said:

"We are afraid that we may cause an opening

through which may the West

      elude us

***

I aboluted with the dust of money 

so the monetary mosques rid me

ًas I entered bare footed therein

I fasted as for the beauties

When the muezzin announced the azan 

I found but a hungry beauty

so did I break my fasting with her delicious sorrow

؟!am I sadistic ?

      ***

      what on earth that Antara did not see?

؟!

He saw every hardy

َbut never did he see

a teardrop shed by his love

ًas he was laid down 

into his last rest

      ***

perhaps the confusion of the stove

that disclosed my secret embedded in fire

and chased sacredness

:up to the yard of the horizon ,to force us ask:

is a messenger of milk enough

؟!to bring a charge of infants to silence

      ***

..And now

has the lake's sail gone mad

؟being timed on the hallucination of the wind?

has the old lantern sneezed

؟out our ancient heavens?

:though this I dare say:

perhaps we are the losers

under the floor of insanity

and the silence of this stained- with –lightning alphabet- wilderness

where always the feathers of the dawn

do tickle me to a twilight left with the invalid

where the whole keys

are dressed in advices with no intentions

save to provoke the locks of mirage

      ***

now 

do I have but my own day

؟to sharpen it and let it go through the heart of the morrow

do I have but the green

to press its hammer 

!!so as to free this forest from its limits

      ***

the stone-made benches alone meet the gardens

where they gather the trash

and hang them on the trees

in defiance of the dust men 

      ***

how salty tastes the wakefulness !

how strong the sourness of the rust is 

.inside the mouth of sleepiness !

      ***

horses that provoke the desert there under

ًnever will they arrive their destination

      ***

 

inside the fist of forgetfulness

does the blueness of the handkerchiefs wake up 

. So that you always come out through the shaded tears 

      ***

never would I forgive you, the dawn who comes to 

from the desert of time

.only to hang mine flamed day on the wall of the sunset

      ***

A sky lays on my she-child's accent 

how can I stand not casting my self

.into the bottle of coo

      ***

O, knight, that comes out from the nights of battles

beware! My perspicacity is well-armored

      ***

do I have to preserve my horses

as I do have for dragging my cart

a cattle of sighs

      ***

why does the crane save its flying

and squat on my torn helmet?

hy does my blood drop emergently

؟!whenever strange thoughts rattled into the month's head 

      ***

It is I who gave the idea

the right to assume the sudden beat

now , how dare the red of the traffic light stop me

.when I come out from unwritten-yet era?

      ***

 

today I have

an ear accustomed to bombardment

that is why I 'll filter the explosions

according to the ammunition alphabet

      ***

Why do you call it night

when it is a mere day wrapped up in to

!!black eyes

      ***

as a billiard ball does my lifetime roll along

and flow into the wedding of the outlets

      ***

I push fever towards the soul ground

so as not to be touched by a time 

I do this all

only for getting a fever soothsayer 

      ***

… 'Cause I shot the dying horse with mine mercy

the mule have to incarnate

and pour into its veins the badges blood

      ***

O, bare-footed merchants of war

always do you rise your voices

.though we have no ladders to climb, you know

      ***

O, mortar

do grind the night of the falsehood

and beat the crimson color with the last part of the night inside the broken-off- ration

might there be for the day a twilight clever enough to listen to the stars

and tickle the time edges inside the hourglass

      ***

O, night do recite

the ammunition spell

!before would you open the stars envelop !

ten years now passed

every day I go down

to the market

sometimes for working

sometimes for shopping

sometimes merely for nothing

there I see among the struggling crowds

the UN badge glittering

over a UN observer

while he smokes a pipe

and a pack of bucks in his hand

I do know them by their ironed uniform,

their healthy faces,

:I ask

what on earth they inspect

inside such a market?

why don't they eye hunger

as it walks on two

and enters lanes and houses?

why don't they eye poverty

as it eats up like a mouse

the pockets of the millions ?

suddenly I stop asking my self

،and cling to the first bus full of sorrows

،As I recall my infant;

..she is waiting me to fetch her milk .

 

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