Memory for Forgetfulness

—A drowning man has no need to make sure the river is flowing. A man on fire has no need to make sure the flames keep burning. And a hanged man doesn’t have to guarantee the strength of the rope.

And when we write, and call upon others to write, in the name of creative freedom, we are doing nothing more than bringing into focus the points of light and first efforts scattered by dissension over an idea founded on this simple assertion: we want to liberate ourselves, our countries, and our minds and live in the modern age with competence and pride.

He has nothing that can identify him: no identity card, no passport, and no birth certificate. That’s why he finds in us, who have no homeland or family, a people and a homeland

Don’t ask if I love you, because you know how my body, searching for its safety in another body, worships yours.

I shall call you D because you’re the dawning of madness, the dawning of hell, the dawning of paradise, and the dawning of all passions that can win a war by an act of love not realizable except in the fear of death.

[36] How many women are you, you barefoot heavenly cluster? How many women are in you, that I may plummet into the press of my spirit and be saved as the moment is born? How many women are you, that time may enter into time and come out a silken thread, singling me out for the gallows of the blood? How many women are in you that this moment may, on two feet—seals of heaven and hell—take the shape of a history of prayer and lust? How many women are you, that the history of this belly, kneaded from the fragrance of jasmine and its color, lost between light and milk, may become the story of battles waged to defend youth and one’s forties? How many women are you, that I may bring back a winter already past out of rain yet to fall, from whose drops I can collect something that will feel like what I’ve known and thus be able to compare one rapture with another?

Concerning this topic, Abu al-Mudhaffar al-Abyouri wrote: “The worst weapon a man can wield is a tear / When with sharp swords the fire of war is lit.”

Perhaps everyone realized there was no Beirut in Beirut: for this lady sitting on a stone is like a sunflower that follows what doesn’t belong to her, dragging lovers and enemies alike around a cycle of false appearances, sometimes with or against them, and other times not with or against them.

An innocent question, needing an innocent answer, except that—in this company—it is filled with the desire to assassinate the poet who dares to announce he is writing his silence.

—Good-bye, sir.

—Where to?

—Madness.

—Which madness?

—Any madness, for I have turned into words.