Poem by Taha Muhammad Ali (29.IV.1984) in So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005.
The Falcon
1
If ever,
sadness, it might
be in my power
to free myself
from you one day,
then I would feel,
decidedly,
the suicide’s delight as he’s freed
from all responsibility!
And imagine that I
were suddenly
released from you,
like flocks of the Sada’ –
the death-owl –
being released
from our fields and skulls. . .
What would happen then?
What would happen
were I to abandon you now?
Suppose I were, at this very moment,
to leave you behind,
as the drunkard leaves the tavern –
what would I lose?
For me it’s sufficient to simply
not know sadness any longer –
not know it as winter approaches
and not when it departs,
not when summer arrives,
and not when the season moves on.
The rivers’ vagrancy wouldn’t sadden me,
nor would the birds’ being sent away.
Not even the flowers
themselves
would stir
the obscure shades of sorrow in me,
or the various sorts of melancholy
that always remain a mystery.
2
Birds,
flowers,
and you, O river –
after my sadness is freed from you,
rivers will no longer be rivers,
nor birds birds,
and even the flowers themselves
will cease being flowers!
For without my sorrow,
at the end of the day,
rivers will only be water,
and the flower
merely a plant –
without my grief.
Without me
The bird will be seized
by night and perish.
And those that remain
after my longing
and apart from my solitude –
a crow here,
a screech owl there –
won’t be birds,
and not songbirds.
For. . . what is the bird
without my memories?
What is the songbird
without my longing,
and what is song?
What is the bird beyond my burning?
Without my sadness
the songbirds are only
a forest of beaks,
a thicket of claws!
The songbird without my sadness
is merely a mass of flesh;
it wouldn’t be covered
by a single feather,
except. . .
for the adder’s pursuit;
and no fine down would clothe it –
the sand’s gown across the dune –
apart
from the kestrel’s enticement
and the hunters’ lure!
3
And still,
it seems
I really will
be freed of you –
that I’ll leave you
and find rest at last!
For the very first time,
I’ll give up
and abandon you
as the pirate abandons his ship.
But I will not bury you
in the sands of the shore
as the thieves of the sea
bury their earrings and coins.
I’ll leave you to the foxes –
and never return.
4
And yet. . .
by God, my sadness,
before we part
I’d ask of you,
before you leave
as those who’ve already left us,
I have but a single request:
I fear that I won’t see you
after I say farewell –
for when it comes
to saying farewell,
I am – in fact – something wondrous:
Every single thing I leave
in the world
is lost for eternity!
And I do not stretch
out my hand
in saying farewell to a creature
without my wishing, in vain,
not to die
before I’d see it again.
5
I’d like you, sadness,
to tell me
something that perplexes me.
I will not ask you how
it is that I was destined
to be slaughtered in this fashion!
Nor will I ask
what your purpose is
in having made me so –
to fall like kingdoms
and crack like the walls of volcanoes.
I will not plead with you to tell me
why you’d have me
scatter like clouds
and collapse
like the eagle’s features.
Matters such as these,
undoubtedly,
concern me,
but I have become addicted to them
and now I’d like to let them rest,
as fear, sometimes, begins to doze
and seeds seem to drowse.
6
Also. . .
I will not ask
where you came from
how you prepared,
or where you are going.
More than once
I followed you
when you weren’t paying attention.
Like a Bedouin tracker,
I followed your trail. . .
And always you led me there –
to that same place,
and that same time,
and to those very same springs!
7
I won’t even ask you
when,
where,
or how you came
to settle like this
in the palm of my hand,
a trained falcon
whose memories come
in waves like the sailor’s weeping –
whose wings in the night
are blue daggers,
whose eyes are like two lovers,
their lids resembling
two green imploring arms.
8
What baffles me,
my sadness,
is why you’re so much
greater than I am –
deeper than my wakefulness,
and more remote than all my dreams!
Your fingerprints are more complex
than my identity.
And your visage resembles
A vast desert:
before it the path loses heart.
Ports refuse it!
What confuses me is
that you are bigger than my day,
greater than my past,
and larger than my tomorrow.
9
In my childhood,
sadness,
I saw a songbird
being attacked by a viper.
The bird had been maimed
and the flock had left it,
and the fear I witnessed
exploding in its eyes. . .
as it tried to flee –
I cannot forget:
Forests, moons, and lakes –
exile, streams,
and pastures the eye can’t hold –
all were heaped up around its neck
and gave way,
unraveling in a flash,
so strong was its fright!
Massacres and cities
were gathered there in its gaze
with tremendous speed
and, in terror, were burning –
spreading across its feathers,
its cry, its legs!
That small bird’s fear
cannot possibly be
its alone!
That songbird’s fear cannot possibly
be the fear of a single bird!
The fear of that small bird,
my sadness,
cannot be fathomed except
as the fear of the flock as a whole.
10
Yes, you baffle me, sadness,
in that, most of the time,
you’ve confused me –
for I haven’t been able to recognize you!
And how often have I denied you. . .
How often have doubts contended with me
over you, when evening and birds
and trees fall in –
aligned like columns
in the distance toward the horizon,
all waiting for their portion from you
like the dispossessed awaiting aid
upon their day of calamity?
How often have I denied you
even as I was studying your traces,
bewildered by you,
unsure of you,
turning over
what remained of your nest,
as remains of ancient manuscripts
piece by piece are turned?
Are you my private sadness?
Are you truly the sadness
of a single person?
Is it conceivable
that you are mine alone –
for I cannot understand you
except to think that you might be
a secret sadness the flock
has hidden with me?
Is it in my power to leave you
when I barely know you
except as something stalked,
pursued by snakes
and anticipated by spears?
Could I really let you go
when I am not aware of you
except in your being
a forbidden sadness
the age has left me,
entrusted to me,
charged me to protect?
11
Most likely,
sadness,
you are not mine alone
and, so long as you are mine and theirs,
how could I possibly
do with you what I will?
