This is my chair You Know how to jump over the red lines. *** An ash tray and a switched-off mobile And in your bag Airports And trains And knitted robes Man is not like woman! *** A single chair in the corner of a dark balcony And a lot of windows watch me. *** I sit here I pass my palm on my forehead To empty my eyes from events I keep your eyeglasses My mother’s shawl The dress of the little girl who was consumed by cancer And my brother’s ruler Who was exhausted by searching for some lost millimeters I keep all of them In the garden of the family house So that the cut in my head will be complete. *** You are a woman of many details And I A silent man Throwing stones in the noise of the world. *** This is my bookcase I used a jungle of rosewood The wood was used up So I made your bookcase with ivory Then I sat down Tidying your piles of papers And love letters. *** Searching for the ‘Book of Death’ will need a month Take ‘The Prophet’ To measure how thick the darkness in history notebooks And take ‘The Odyssey’ To measure how callous my feet are And take ‘The Capital’ And count the salt of the earth And wipe my white forehead With your white palm And cover the sun with the other one. *** This is my desk My many eyes under its sheet of glass Do not look at you as you think But to the lens of the old photographer Who used to sleep in Marcella’s park And the paper Looking out of the drawer now Does not intend to commit suicide, not at all, But it leaps out to breathe. And by the way This is not my next poem about you But an indictment of a poet loving his country. *** The lamp on my desk Must be hit at the back to work A woman! Looks like a willow sleeping at the village brook. *** Here are my necklaces and medals The day before yesterday Was the anniversary of my coronation They distributed souvenirs and flowers And flew colourful balloons But I was not there. *** And here is a sparrow On a swing It was inside a cage like all the people And we took it out when it stopped singing And it became Just a silent sparrow On a swing. *** Here is the old sofa from Asiut A hair from you hangs to it The Marines walked on it when they poisoned Diglah Since that day Dust has not left Neither has loneliness. *** And this is my bed Broad Broooaaad! Its sheet has been white for two decades. My daughters in the next room Are not there I dispersed them everywhere I do not see The youngest one who looks like you Was melted in the medicine cup As I was sleeping Like your free half that was melted, too. *** Man is not like a woman Women know a flower And men Do not even realize it Before it melts between their fingers Leaving behind its scent So one of them says: There was a flower here! *** These are clothes-lines Loose My coats and jackets are heavy with women’s problems Like you, they practiced Swallowing arsenic And accompanying Kafka. *** This is a mirror A sheet of reflective glass Within a frame of walnut wood Nothing in it worthy of talking about Just a man and a woman About to shake hands Then depart Each will forget the other’s features tomorrow And the memory of the glass will remain Waiting for a new woman Who hates noise, like you, And knows how to jump over the red lines. *** Oh, goddess of the little things Take off your watch And throw it on the ground next to mine Because the evil hands –as you see- Are moving. *** Is my name carved on the house door? That means nothing except A name is carved on a house door! For each house needs a man’s name Even if he was a poet Occupying the house Nothing but a single chair In a dark corner. *** Come And sit next to me Tomorrow, I’ll buy another chair But I Will remain lonely. _________ 8 July 2005