Lebanon

I would that you were with me hence, sharing
This celestial view seen, unseen, before
Where Sannin eternally up staring
At the evening star glaring at the shore.

The deep is rising, the ships heading east
The green mountains capped with snow behind
Perhaps the eye of an artist possessed
May contain such a paradise in mind.

Come to me, darling, and look at the strand
The edge breaking foam lay miles apart
Amidst a galaxy topping the land
Looming a sky within heaven a heart.

Come, darling, to see what I see, and more
Stars above, stars below, moon in between
A brigade of cavalry charging the shore
Falling back on sand in glorious sheen.

O life! There's nothing more to enchant me
Than this vision of growing ecstasy
I feel dissolved and carried fancy-free
Where beauty and dreams meet in poesy.

That's the Lebanon the heart of the world
Where the cedars living for ages unknown
And the flag of liberty always unfurled
In a democracy without a throne.

On Lebanon

Can we keep company with the wings of time
Cleaving the bounds of distance in every clime
To gain our cherished freedom out of this cage
Flying yon the bars by the wisdom of age?

Is that only a wish we track fading gleam
On the waste of life, a mirage in a dream?
Yet we dream the dreams dreamt by dreamers before
Who had sailing ships failing against the shore .

So friend, be not sure of the things as they seem .
'Tis like churning the sea to skim but the ream .
That's why our joy remains tied to our sorrow ;
That's why what's true today may not be tomorrow.

Cannot? why try to alter the scheme of fate ;
Would it not be better to reason and wait?

 And

Blink not wonder not my most precious friend
The world has a beginning must've an end
Better praise God and catch your heart by hand
To shape it right to love your neighbor and
Preach love and peace to those who listen and
Explain to them what're the rights of man and
What's liberty what's equality and
What's a brotherhood what's altruism and
How to be sociable lovable and
Pleasant and friendly to all p'ople and
Never to skin nature to react and
Pollute the world by the reek of smoke and
Blink not wonder not my most precious friend
The world has a beginning must've an end

6/2004

Cavaliers

A forest of stars twinkling far away
Over the surging spahis of the sea
And a full moon sighted pretty and gay
In her topmost splendor beyond the lea

Heading over the horizon off sight
Orbiting the earth blooming up again
A tiny cres'ent living by the sunlight
Aging with the night waning o'er the main

Leaving the cavaliers on a quick raid
Over the vast green meadows of the sea
Thousands of steeds brigade pushing brigade
Charging the shores to gain their liberty

8/2000

Come Brothers and Let Us Read the Chart

Come brothers and let us read the chart
And venture into the deep valley of the past
To see how man by the blade of his mind has cleft
The heart of the future and has carved
On the rock of Time the letters of his name

Again read about the dimensional outlook of nations
and read
How it was made the measure of a look high
Towers of glory with the fullest speed
By masons who planned for a touch of the sky

Nations have a measureless magnitude
Having the breath of knowledge the link thought
Of determination and fortitude
A spirit of the oracular mysticism thus wrought.

5/1998

I Recalled a Dream

I recalled a dream I dreamed during the century Confu­cius was born while I was coming on the train of time into here. My memory then I remember was the same as when I remembered reading what I have forgot.

Europe is boiling in a test tube searching for a lost equa­tion. The world is polluted and the people are trying Para­dise to steal the fruit. Though every thing is plain and clear, I could not understand and went to sleep.

Confucius in my dream like a vision passed by for a short visit, we played tric-trac and the dice was in my favor; he smiled when I saw the Yellow Peril on his face. He said: "Mark on the Calendar please 8-6-2091" and disappeared like a shadow in the shade.

2/2002

 

Keep Your Faith

You can't but climb the slopes to reach the height
Of your ambition on top of the hill
Mounting be adamant and keep your flight
Your task is hard lad it needs a strong will

Hence begin drilling from the well of time
The wisdom left by the sages of old
To have the feather for your flight by rhyme
And be a star like Venus in the fold

Success is not a gift given gratis
But the fruit of labor along the years
E'er be alert lad and ne'er be careless
God will bless you keep your faith and prayers
Remember lad when on top of the hill
Your task has been finished by your strong will

4/2003

The World Is But What We Hear See and Feel

Thin end of the wedge and brandish the steel
Nothing might change the destiny of things
The world is but what we hear see and feel
Being poor or having the wealth of kings

You cannot my friend and I cannot weet
What's coming in the basket from our fate
So drink your cup and smash it at your feet
What's coming my friend must come soon or late

Look how the shepherd of the nightingales
Wrote and hoped to live longer to write more
Keats the home of po'sy the world still hails
With the birds up'n his grave still weeping more.

Thin edge of the wedge and brandish the steel
The world is but what we hear see and feel.

5/1999

Awake Dreaming

Awake dreaming I thought I saw the Lord
I opened my eyes, I missed Him and wept
A warm tear fell down on the sward
Bloomed near a church where a bell was chiming
Far across the boundary of time I heard
The choir invisible. I woke up gazed at heaven and prayed

Baalbeck 1997

Shiva

Shiva enough graves and enough headstones
The Middle East has become a graveyard
Where the rights of man are found fetid bones
And the bones of lib'rty in the junkyard

Stop your ugly destr'ction and your jaywalk
Your timely triumph but a shameful crime
I'm talking to you now cock of the walk
Take heed of the lethal patience of time

No creation shall live fore'er to last
Walking all the distance of tomorrow
The walker walking falls un'ware and fast
Shrouded by the mourning wails of sorrow

Shiva come to God who'll forgive your crime
It's time to become pen'tent, it's your time

Baalbeck January, 1997

The Wonder Man

How I long to saddle my horse and fly
Back over the tracks of life to regain
The age of my youth ere I age and die
Then o then! I'll love and be loved again.

And so I pass through the trellis of time
Having my doubts wrestling over my head
Could I on the ladder of the years climb
And go backward while I'm going ahead

Oh God! but why should I age bending wane
Why not by your will live once and again
Shrouded by your blessings and grace remain
The Wonder Man who dies and lives again?

Baalbeck May, 1987

Wash, Wash, Wash

 

Wash, wash, wash,
Thy sabulous shores, O Sea!
In waves rising and ebbing to die
Like the countless hopes in me.

I have heard what I hear now, around
The shores of eternity,
The echo of a voice in the sound
Of the living age in me.

So deep that voice growing in my ears,
A song of life and regret
Of childhood, the gray hair and the years
I have forgot to forget.

I value the years, the wrinkles deep
On my brow, around my eyes
But O! for the thoughts that come and heap
On my heart, a world of sighs.

I would a day back to live again
A child with children at play
Without envy, without hate or pain
A child, full of cheer and gay.

Wash, wash, wash,
Thy old brownish shores, O Sea!
But the hopes dead and gone will never
Come again to life in me.

You Can and Anyone Can Fill the Cup

You can and anyone can fill the cup
In the spring of life when all can say cheers
But when autumn comes dry will be our cup
And we lay it aside full of our tears

Though the spring is the green garden of hopes
It remains a vision of fancy made
Since we climb the heights and track down the slopes
To live in delay with time in the shade.

Rarely a witty sage might leave a name
Who might leave his breath writ by a feather
To live a lasting memory of fame
As long as sun and moon face one an'ther

Life is but steel and flint brushed together
Twinkling dimming slowly gone forever.

8/2003

 

A Shelter Of Tears In Memory of My son Bassam

O Time! What a trap of smiles you have made
My spring days were so delightful to taste:
But now I feel the keen edge of your blade
I suffer take me to your bosom in haste.

The tears in the eyes a lake of sorrow
Within a faint shadow talking to me
«Pa dry not the tears hence nor tomorrow;
Keep them in your eyes a shelter for me:

«One tear means a universe of despair
So why weep and count the tears in the lake?
One would be more then sufficient to bear
Be patient, Pa, stop, weeping for my sake;

«Dad take care of Ma, Jawdat and Janine;
Love them as always I've loved them before;
Sorry my journey so early had been
To be with dear mother for ever more.”

O Time! should you be so bitter of breath
Having mothered birth and the years of care?
Why without notice your warrants of death
Are mailed to the King of Terrors by air

Baalbeck November 15, 1983

 

Between Here and There

When I forget that I was anywhere
And you pass by missing the view
Harbour your yearnings and weep your hopes there
Leaving the tears a memory of you

Which may water the sod to grow the turf
Over the glebe where we sat in days of yore
Looking the sea the shore the breaking surf
Each dreaming of each shadows loved before

Those shadows were the joy of life still there
Standing uplifted by the living air
Looking into vacancies of chance where
We were awake dizzied unaware

Of the sweeping time we've lost anywhere
On the hills of hope between here and there.

Bealbeck August 31, 1984

Verse

Verse, the lustrous galaxy of the mind,
Radiating thoughts of wisdom well designed ;
A torch of love lit on the palm of Time
By the lively heart-glowing beats of rhyme.

'Tis the living lip and tongue of sages,
Who were the life blood of all the ages,
Of a world once in caves, without a spark,
Of knowledge to illuminate the dark

With iambs. trochees, spondees well displayed;
Scholars befriended the measure that made
The eye spring of language a teeming well
Of rhythm upbursting from a mental swell.

Bless them, illustrious poets of yore,
Who have engineered and left at the shore
A lighthouse of poesy, yesterday,
A glare of the past, that will show us the way

Yesterday

Yesterday I sat threading them
Those beads of the past
A rosary of memories
The years each a gem buried
In the eternal pyramid of time
Leaving my mind so often consulting its pillow
About the present and the merciless greedy past
Chewing and gradually devouring the future
Together with the defeated trailing generations
Pushing caravans through the throat of yesterday
Into the spacious hungry stomach of oblivion
Yet with the fright of the sustained worries
When looking back upon the rosary of my memories
Ah then! how beautiful to repeat then
And how dearly I remember
My childhood my school days
The smile of my father the glad eye of my mother
The wonderful times hunting lions and elephants in the forest
And jumping in the dark over walls to meet a friend -
That's why I say and believe that
The people on earth should always accept
Living a joy fading into sorrow
That was and still is the key-pattern of creation
Birth growth toil hope expectation
Then the beyond to free the soul
What remains but the lime of him
Who was buried yesterday.

Baalback Oct. 4, 1984

Shelley

England grieved for a heart buried in Rome
Of a poet glor'fied by rhyme and fame
Cremated ashore far away from home
England high over England carved his name
Shelley who allured the world by his verse
To a skylark he cherished to hear heard
Spheres of harmony the whole universe
A flood of songs in the throat of a bird
'Gain by the wind and the cloud had a flight
Of thought where found the lab of prosody
Thereon he adj'sted rhythm to meaning right
By his computer mind of poesy
Still he had more ambition to explore
Ill fated his boat capsized on the wave
And he died 'gainst his will to live no more
Leaving a lonesome heart still in the grave
For the larks to mourn, for the clouds to weep
For the wind to moan, the muse to sorrow
For the whole world in memory to keep
A name marked on the gates of tomorrow.

2/1980

A Lost Hope

 

What's hope but a dream we dream half awake,
A mirage on the desert seen unbound,
Away, beyond away, a gleaming fake
Of a vision, we vision found unfound.

There's nothing in the Hall of Time to find,
But the dreams of today and tomorrow,
And dreaming of hope, we walk in the blind;
A world of joy in a world of sorrow.

We travel with the Caravan of life,
And our journey is determined by fate;
Though we have legions of thought in the strife
To catch a hope, but we are always late.

Whether or not we take it false or true,
There's not a hope built by the beats of rhyme;
Who can make a thing of nothing and who,
Can climb the years up till the end of time.

Who are we, where are we going ahead
Speeding, losing our days and years to fall
In the Tunnel of Time dead pushing dead,
Without hope, without choice, nothing at all.

A Mediterranean Memory

 

Gallop, gallop thy white horses, O Sea,
Forever o'er thy boundless blue domain.
Carthage and Rome with galley and cav'lry
Fast sought the everlasting flame in vain
But to fall, blind of vision, in ev'ry land,
Leaving the torch of fame still in thy hand.

Nations, like seasons, hold their sway and die,
Dead leaves of history upon the shore
Of time, where naught endures for eternity
Save a mirage on the desert of yore,
A memory of past glory upon sand,
Whilst thou ever beat, O Sea, against the strand.

Knights, princes, countless kings to come, may all,
Like those before, display their battle fame,
Bards with songs of life and love enthrall,
Wise men their theories and theses frame,
But none, O Sea, for long will bear the brand
Beside thee, face to face or hand in hand.

All here to play, win or lose life's game
Life is a shot fir'd, a fire kindled, snuff'd.
O destiny, O Despair, O the shame
That there should remain but the fallen dust
Of life's caravans crossing the earth's face
From naught into the nothingness of space.

Gallop, gallop thy white horses, O Sea:
Charging the rugged gray rocks of the shore;
Here thou wert and here thou shalt ever be
Steadfast till the end of time and e'er more.

A Stone Awaiting Change of Identity

A stone awaiting change of id'ntity
In the giant boulder mountains of time
Norn Mother tempered right my entity
By adding water and a breath to lime

There I was promised a lift to parad'se
By the Word of God in books I have read
Since I began to pray, fast and be nice
Feeding the hungry a share of my bread

Yet when I thought of Adam and the fruit
I wondered and pondered how could I rise
Could I have a space ticket from Beirut
To take off toward the azure promised skies

There upon I thought and preferred to wait
Destinies being the concern of fate

9/1997

All That Comes

All that comes with the morn goes with the eve
As of old Al-Racheed and his empire
The ancient Greeks withal never did leave
But the futile ashes after the fire

Hannibal crossing far Spain legions sent
Across the Alps to conquer Roman Rome
Of his victory he was confident
Yet he was defated by Rome right at home

Thus as ever we rise and fall in dreams
And forget for whom once we did sorrow
The world is just a paradox it seems
Glowing today may not be tomorrow.

5/1930

An Image

Behind our sylvan home, there's a mountain
Sloping down a forest so thick and green
And drilling deep to the shore a fountain
And far at the horizon I have seen
A picture
Around a ledge of stars clipped to a beam
A sight of a vision caught in a dream.

Clear and demure, the surface of the sea
The sight refracted on the water seen
Effigies in mind-bending ecstasy
All over the blue, the fishes have been
Gathering
Looking at the image being a dream
And the dream, a beam, in my eyes a gleam.

With the sun a budding ball grading high
A horseman spurring up the road his steed
And the birds up in clouds shading the sky
Flocks against flocks, whirling wings in full speed
And I look
At the dust behind the horseman in flight
Leaving me yearning for a vanished sight.

Baalbeck and the Ruins

Take yourself charioted to the city
Of the gods, a temple built on the plain;
Upheld by the girders of Time to remain,
A unique structure of eternal fame.

O, well for the thoughts that tradition stay,
Centuries back still signaling we find!
This heirloom of the Roman Empire left,
But a thought of a heart dead long ago.

Man has nothing more of Magic to show,
Having the lime stones of these massive walls,
Quarried a light travel, ere the eye caught,
A wonder, of the Seven, in the world made.

Time a count of years; here we count no more,
Hundreds of generations have passed, and still,
These pillars against time a time tall,
With the fingers of the wind a harp played.

These shattered walls a relic falling down,
To stay forever lying, sand on sand,
Till time with the feet of age passes by,
Leaving the gods, turning his face away.

Brothers

Brothers why be like a moon on the wane
Ever beating the bolted door in vain
Hence why not unite again to stand 'gain
Prideful of your Lebanese cultured vein

Be brave to bear the burden of your fate
And wise to quell the imposed storm of hate
Then teach those gate-crashers to understand
The meaning of our brotherhood and land
The meaning of free birth and liberty
The rights of man and his integrity

Beat your sight to the battle field speeding
Where your envied glory's wounded bleeding
Bind the wounds with straps of courage and be
The strong echo heard of your victory.

11/1986

Drugged by the beauty of the plain

East by the forested hills pent
West by the ocean restrained
And a shepherd tending to his sheep
A breed of Merinos by Napoleon let out of Spain
I prayed him his lyre to wake
Tuning was heard and playing listened
The fields of maize I saw their stalks sway
Cupping leaves around the ears shaking notes of
ecstasy
Blasted from the quarry of the wind bewitching beats
Since the wind had been the breath of the world
Bearing the hidden secrets of harmony.
Clever, like Orpheus, still tapping the chords
The dreaming ocean upheaved
Steeds lashed by the rhythm frenzied
Beating hooves sweeping the shore
Ebbing billowing grouping racing again
Spray snorting from their nostrils blown
Rising spit-curls merging shaping clouds
Drifting islands of melody melting away.

And the blooming sun in water fading
With echoes reverberating from the hills
A reverie of music lost on the main.

And still I look at the lowing herd and the shepherd
Drugged entranced oblivious of time
To recover, I must wait.

Forget Not

Forget not the honey days, dear of yore,
And the souvenirs with which they went by;
Those cherished memories, sweet, are no more,
For yester, darling, was heaven with thou nigh.

The Eglantine, the starry daffodils,
The daisies, roses that I could retrace;
The lilies grown in lakes and by the rills,
All seemed fading with the glance of thy face.

The song sparrows, the larks and their sweet lays
The happy swain with the tuneful bassoon;
The Grecian nightingales and the coal black jays,
All hushed whence with thy harp thou wert in tune.

Forget not the honey days, dear, of yore,
And the souvenirs with which they went by;
Those cherished memories, sweet, are no more,
For yester, darling, was heaven with thou nigh.

As the tide of years sweeps by, remember,
Oh, darling! those past ecstasies that once we shared;
My heart to thee dear, hence did surrender,
And since for thee lone in the world I cared.

Recall that I'll love thee ever the more,
And yearn to see thy face and hear thy song;
Oh darling! I'm still waiting by the shore,
Where ships are looming, wilt thine tarry long?

Gibran Khalil Gibran

Torrential waters collapsing swallow speed tunneled
Out of the cave a stream gargling throat
Falling braids haltering over mountain steep
Tousled spattering bubbles on the lake
Swaying breezily a waltz moving rounds
Rejoicing to be debating to while away
Leaning gracefully reeling swoon and pop
To fall zillions of grains as if blown of sand
Around a stone the shape of man
Having two birds perching on fingertips
Gazing at the Universe as if mapping its perplexity.

It joys my soul to stop here and have a drink
And take a look at the breast of this proud mountain to
read
The history of the world written on the ribs of its slopes
Caving shoulders rising-lips drinking sky
And the ancient cedars their vulturine wings
Facing space by their spearing years
Arid the years dropping ashen leaves
Floating on the ever tumbling down the yawn between
hills
Splitting around beauty-spots merging again
Meandering down eye travel to the sea
Welcomed by brigades of thirsty spahis rushing to the
shore
Ah! What a luscious bewildering creation
Where a world seems created but a piece of heaven in a
dream.
Here Gibran was born and reared
A boy soodling in company of his courage and hope
Seemingly indignant behind the bars of his dreams.

One day, I saw him worried
My hand upon his shoulder, I said,
"My boy, what ails you here
Don't you see this paradise of your land?"
"Father," he said,
"Here I have no plow to cultivate the field I own
And reap the harvest of my aspirations
Nor available possibilities to explore
I would a change of climate for a change of fate
My cause living the eyes of the birds
A sight cleaving into hope to find
The missing plow
Turn the earth into furrows Seed the fallow
And reap the harvest of my brain."
Son, when I think of your prudence
Reflecting shell of self words uttered of faith
Unsheathing your vision of trust
I say, God be with you
And keep sessile to your aerial of sense
Having will turn it shell and peddle oar
And sail over the ocean sweep of years
Searching for the lantern of your fate.

Gibran eyed the birds gazing in space
And the sunstruck spray rising veil
Gathering racks fading on the waste
With the wind of indignation playing dice in his mind
One moment of thought, one moment of tears
He left memory keeping the past the future the world to
keep
Yon the horizon like a humming bird
Flitting from flower to flower
Plucking the petals of wisdom from the orchard of time
Reaping the field seeded with glints of prophecy in his
mind
Where he wrote The Prophet and a Prophet made.

Going Back

We start going back on the road we take
Walking ahead to the outset behind;
That's how of birth we are stepping to make
A ring back, on the track into the blind.

That's a round trip we are destined to run
Climbing the hill and railing down the Slack,
And railing we signal the day is done
And what is done, a journey ahead and back.

Sure, we come going with the ticks of Time,
A distance measured by fate and we fall,
Never to stand again, never to climb,
Having been back and gone beyond recall.

That's how travelers ahead walking back
Leaving impressions only of name
A memory of the walk on the track
And the track trails in smoke behind the Flame.

Going—To—Tomorrow

Listen to the sound of your inner self
Innately hidden in your blood pressure
A latent feeling of belief and doubt
The mute and dormant secret of your heart

The heart but the sinew feeding the mind
Of thoughts once rightly mothered by virtue
On the breast of piety must achieve
The tr'umph of Faith o'er the malice of doubt

To keep up the excellence of a perfect life
On your way friend find no cause to defect
Never baptize a doubt to dwell in you
A decoy of persuasion doing wrong

Be sure of yourself housing your piety
The visioned ladder of light to the clear
Hence climb the steps of virtue to your farthest reach
Committing the evil spy to the flames

True believers are the shield of sanctity
Go on my friend and smash the fear of doubt
And be adamant in your approach to God
To keep going en route to—Tomorrow

'Tis a hard thorny way to the Heavens
Walking doubtful steps in a frail belief

6/1987

Guess?

I dreamt my lifeline beaded with the years
Each was blinking happiness in my brain
All were spent without regrets, without tears
And I had determined to start again.

One day gleefully, I was lying at my best,
I was looking how pretty the world around
And drawing a map of dreams on my breast
When I heard: Wow! Wow!—the sound of my hound.

A teammate was passing by. "Cheers," he said,
He was elegant, bright of mind and deep
He sat down nearby drowsy and outspread
Never a word before he went to sleep.

Overhead a flock of ducks on the wing
And my dog again began to bark, wow
I took my gun, aimed well and fired to bring
One or two and they came down, but now.

My mate woke up and with a gentle sigh
Said, "What makes you so happy my friend
Look at them, one dead, the other to die
The rest are dispersed, where, who can portend."

" 'Tis forbidden to shoot game at this time
Why should you break the law for a bird,
The judge may call you to explain your crime
And the oath you've taken upon your word.

I Rock and Roll

I rock and roll in a frenzy of shout .
A Bacchanal drinking the heathen wine
I meet the world without fear but with doubt
Of the gods when I move across the line.

The cup of hope frequently did I sip
And as frequent of despair did I drain
Both cups I emptied and smashed on my lip
And simply lost that which I seemed to gain.

That's why I believe to believe not
That alone I can build a bungalow
As toiling always I have had a knot
To dishevel was a bit fast or slow.

O God! give me a hand where I may be.
I have searched everywhere to no avail,
You are my lord, I'm drowning on the sea
Of your Ocean, sailing without a sail.

Lines

What's nothingness but a nothing of nothing
And the infinite but a limitless space?
What is time but a round of endless motion?
We are all within the infinite a thing
The infinite within time in every place.
And time within the nothingness a notion
Thus nothingness, time, and the infinite plod
Together along the way leading to God.

Mahatma Gandhi

Go east to India, the land of charm
Where men with snakes twisted around their
breast
These snakes never bite, nor cause any harm
Like those immured within the human chest.

Gandhi, the great philosopher, once said,
"We Indians are born patient and calm,
We worship our God and we seek our bread
For we read the page of life in our palm.

"We fall heads down tied to our destiny
And we grow up with fate to fall again
Naked on the trails of humanity
Caravans of magic within the chain.

"No remains but the links around
Of image to image in memory
A view of marble and firs on the ground
And shadows looming gyved each to a tree.

"There the future will be the steaming past
And we follow along the thread of years
Unloading fast where the billions are massed
To rise and meet the day of smiles and tears.

"That's why we look the hand of might to see
The veins streams of light glowing in the sky
A rainbow with colors of piety
A signal of truth for those who deny."

Gandhi died and burned, his ashes gathered
And thrown into the river fast to flow
Partly clung at the edges and were mothered
To grow well into reeds, long, long ago
Since they are cut by men, pen, and bassoon
The pen writing Gandhi's philosophy
The bassoon blown sounding the beats in tune
Of his heart surging in waves at the sea.

He, a phoenix revived by fire and pen
To live ever read in stories to right
The wax of temper in the hearts of men
The cause of hate, the foolish use of might.

Salaam on earth he preached and still preaching
By the repeated rhythm of the reeds blown
By the pen that has writ and still teaching
How to water the seeds of love where grown.

Music

Pipe major, I hear the unheard again
The wheat wallowing by the flood of beats
Growing tops, swishing notes, rocking, swaying
With the wind, swarming bees, jazz on the plain.

O the wand! I am etherealized
In heaven I would a touch to remain
Hugging space with my arms folding the air
I hear whilst hung by charm immortalized.

Ah! there the sun in sky a glowing vein
A volcano of molten melodies
Fusing spheres into cadence, pyramids
Floating harmony, falling clouds of rain.

Leave me there on the plateau of my mind
Threading through the gravity of the strain
A breath of the pipes spirited away
Forgetting the major, a dream behind.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Eight-and-forty years ago, at this place
Not alone but with my age at that year,
I wheeled back on Time and visioned the face
Of Napoleon with two eyes and one tear.
One Austerlitz, the other Waterloo,
The true eyes of victory and defeat
The hopes and dreams were and were not true,
For the great conquest was a great retreat.

Dire Napoleon against Albion and Spain
Unsheathed the sword to fall upon the blade
And wrathfully lose which he seemed to gain,
The Empire he has made was made unmade.

Exiled, by a furious human tide
To a barren island for life to stay
Vexed, he escaped and again took a ride
To hunt bleeding hawks, but this time he was the prey.

That's a lethal glory remaining fame
A memory for those who may forget
The horrors of the earth in smoke and flame
Where the living with the living have met.

Yet he's still a flame in the cave of Time
And with the second warm tear in my eye,
I am framing with grief this humble rhyme
Of him who is a world where he doth lie.

Old Age

My years waxed old and my shoulders began
To sway like a sparrow hawk in the air
That's the natural destiny of man
Who wears out in the waste of Time un'ware

When youthful I ne'er thought of sen'lity
But now being deprived of my Spring years
Walking in the Fall I feel within me
The echo of doubt the burden of fears

Old age but the dimming glory of youth
The reflection of sad eyes that view back
The delight of the past, the dreams, the truth
Of a life lived left behind on the track

Hence both age and youth were e'er never sure
To stand long against nature and endure

2/1993

Pollution

What a bolt from the blue falling in the west,
Building up the darkest gloom around the world,
Fringed with thunder lightnings flaring curves abreast;
Inside a nuclear weapon yet unhurled.

Look at the mountains of fume muffling the sky,
Spreading everywhere the quietus to make
Of all the life on earth to shrivel and die;
That's the truth, why should we call the truth a fake?

Pollution, gentlemen, say it, why should you blush,
The scientists are racing to catch with fame;
But who will be safe in his boat in the rush
To swim and wallow in the Ocean of flame?

Everything that goes to excess is harmful;
We have had enough of this brutality;
We need more common sense to be more thoughtful
Of the human race and its mortality.

Pollution is not a word uttered, but bane
We feel it in our breath, way down to our heart;
The smoke, the sound, the burning gas all contain
Venom, yet we cry here and there that we are
smart.

Adam ate the forbidden fruit and fell;
We are not prepared to eat the poisoned one
God when disobeyed, He created a hell;
That's why, we should look always beyond the sun.

The ten commandments said, never kill or thieve;
Thus scientists should ever look far away,
Listen to reason, through the gloom to perceive,
The danger of their deadly arms on their way.

The world is beautiful, with the rose, the grass,
The plum in flower, the bush, and the briar,
The plains, the spring, the winter, the life we pass
With our children, why should we not shun the fire?

The Coming Quietus

There's no loss equal to that of the world
Common sense love conscience and sanctity
That's why the vexed unhappy gods have hurled
Their wrath thoughtful of our morality

No worst then the ill will reared in the chest
Of nations growing pollution to bear,
I cried ere long and my cries were ne'er yessed
O world, just once listen and be aware

Of the damaging noise and the thick smoke
The strong reek of powder in your big nose
Can't you smell, can't you foresee the death stroke
A deciphered quietus coming close

Where's your faith your virtue your piety
To think of mankind kindly as a whole
And defy this coming catastrophe
To make heaven life and living your goal

The scientist is naught but a trained thief
Who thieves from nature its hidden forces
That was and still is my presumed belief
A cause to block all the harmful sources

In the schools go back to nature to live
Peacefully without the thick of the fray
Then our heavenly God will surely give
His blessing for us to live free and gay

3/1994

The Universe

Look up at this cloudless nightfall, sky
The dream of man living the wilds of hope
Limitless, bejeweled horizons tilting down
Pulsers heart manner beating forms
A ressau of starfish shapes, gleaming big nail tops
In the blue
A milky way insight spreading clouds of dust
Light in the dark everywhere.

And the scientist, a horseman spurring up
Top to explore
Gathering microelements to diagnose
And learn the why of these objects in this universe
Kept spinning to keep being
The atom he enslaved a sky lab in flight
Trying to open a wider passage through the gate
Of the unknown to make it known.
And I sit a stone gazing wondering the charm
Of these infinite indicators on the floor of Time.

All These Years

Decoyed by false ambition yesterday
When a horrible back we have made
Lost the plus minus gained and went astray
Blood dripping down from the edge of the blade

Sixt’en years we lived wrestling our doubts and fears
Sixt’en years we lived with our acrid sorrow
Sixt’en years we lived with our warmest tears
Yes all these years we lived wait’ng our morrow

Baalbeck
October, 1995

But Why?

But why had we had wars for fifteen years
And self destruction to the sad extreme
Through the most dreadful drive to the frontiers
Of nothingness across a lethal stream

The stream of blood by the sword had been made
The alien sword unsheathed by a hired hand
The hand that killed by alien aid and blade
Was the hand of a guess to understand

Yes fifteen years in the thick of the fray
Waiting relief from those parrots who came
To unravel our knot but where are they
Who accomplished nothing but blame and shame

Their aim at aim was ‘bout gath’ring windfall
Having kept in purdah their attitude
Hence their soft tidings meant nothing at all
Nothing byt the hue of a rainbow viewed

Friends but why like a bundle of fire wood
Burning by the match of a mean intrigue
Remember your centuries of broth’rhood
Your heydays without bloodshed and fatigue

Be eagle like with a trapeze of sway
Equal to your traditional fame of old
The time your ships braved every shore and bay
And your name was the main star in the fold

 

Rustum Haydar

 

Go ye a pilgrim to Baghdad and look
At the world marching to bury a world
He, the tongue of wisdom in speech and book
Was shot and to the grave of time was hurled

Rustum, the mason of the Arab land
Was carving the pillar of liberty
From the firm Arabia granite by hand
A sign of valor, love and unity.

Feisal the great kind knew he was the brain
The vision of hope to rebuild the empire
Like him rarely a man to live again
A man with a heart of prudence and fire.

Truly the empire he planned in his mind
From the Atlantic to the Gulf to be
For the generations to come behind
A huge bastion of might and chivalry.

At the grave they bid him farewell today
And the drumfire ser the heaven to flame
He isn’t dead, he’s walking the years, they say
With the greatest name of glory and fame.

O Friend

O friend, bother me not;
‘Tis said and why to explain?
So be as it comes
Being such be sure of the signal code,
Wind wafted tapping morse on your brow
Missing message have a senescent soothsayer
To read the duplicate copy printed on your palm.
Listen then, and learn about a presumption said
Of a sentence, whose period mark remains the point,
Where to start and where to stop again
Between periods all the way through to retire
With a final dash over the bridge raised by the years.
The distance of a javelin throw measured by leagues to fall
At the terminal, where you’ll have your warrant
Signed, dated with a ticket in your name;
En route look at the smoke fading away,
Perhaps a memory of the short trip,
The ashes left behind.

Beirut, July 4, 1979

 

They Were Here

Only yesterday they were here;
Padeshahs masters and slaves;
Turbans disciples and bards;
Sages philosophers and bards
Where are they now?
Sir, «I hear a fading sound», Sam said
Where Sam?
«Behind the door, Sir»
Open the door, Sam, and call them in.
«They are not there, Sir.»
But how?
«They are gone and gone the sound, Sir»
That’s how successive generations pass,
Voices heard fading gone,
Nothing left but the scattered stones
And scarcely a scribbled name on sand.

Beirut 1960

In My Garden

I sat late in my garden last night;
One rosebud opened and forgot to close;
Others were still sleeping in the moon light,
One fuchsia drooping down tickling the rose

Whispered, «Look the face of the moon the slopes
The shattered ugly spines of mountains high;
All tourists went there, came back without hopes
To find a garden like this in the sky.»

The iris with petaline dangling lips
Cried, «Where’s found the sole power to create
Who were them those who made me the clever trips
To heaven to see the garden of fate?»

The yellow corn cob with a tassel spake:
«Why argue about what’s still in the blind?.
Your syllogism but a sunless mistake,
Since you aren’t the right explorers to find
Paradise the holy garden in space.»

Baalbeck
September 27, 1984

Heart Strings of Israfel

 

Timid the strains I hear tonight yearning fall
Breath of the spheres keyed cadence break
Into breakers of harmony, drifting foam enthrall
The outgoing travelers to listen, swoon and brake;

This improvised stroke of excellence supreme
Has beyond doubt taken the world by surprise,
Caging the nightingales spell-bound perching dream
To fly away, unable to cup their wings and to rise.

And I stand here, pencil in hand, showing
A sketch of the universe punctuated on the sheet of time,
Gallies floating on the ocean of distance, rowing
By the oars of rhythm in unison of a perfect prime.

O God! What are these strains swelling into cascade?
Could it be that this bowed heaven above decreed a bow
With the heart-strings of Israfel, stretched from end to end,
a lute made.
Tuned for the world to hear this celestial melody now?

Or the reveling Muses who have opened their gates tonight
And out with their heavenly hosts serenading from star to star,
Drenching the earth by the sweet echo of their ravishing
delight
With Apollo singing and sweeping the strings of his
melodious guitar;

Playing measures comminglig feet welcoming the gods
to their abode
In the remote town of Baalbeck at the welkin stretch on
the road,
Leading to the well, welling forth glowing meteorites of
harmony to feed
The sun with life feeding the earth to awaken the dormant
seed.

Orpheus

Orpheus pull out the strings of my heart
And stretch them head to bottom on your lyre;
Tighten them, tune them and please quickly start
The yearning melodies of my desire.

Thanks Orpheus, now let me hear the strain
Of the tuneful Nine sent across the years
The soft rhytm within the gales of the spheres.

Have the strings wire deciphered notes to tell
The secret of this being having no end
Kindle the notes,feed the fire, make it swell,
Burn the world with music to comprehend

The meaning of this ecstasy is in the lay,
Since time was born out of time yesterday.

Baalbeck
August 4, 1984

Days Seem Centuries

 

In thee bloomed my betime thought of love
Like a lovely rosebud rainbow hued
In the morning when singest the dove
Its celestial hymns of gratitude.

Ah! Beloved love’s cupful did I drain
The which opiate like seized my head
And now I feel that I am in Spain,
Building seven airy castles to remain
Wonders held up by our loving thread.

Ah! the Linnet chants sweetly and low
Our love songs out of a yearning breast
That call me lure me but I must go
Forward on the road that leads me west.

Days seem centuries since we parted,
Yet our past is still sacred and fair
And I’ll ever be broken hearted
Till I reach the west and meet you there.

Oct. 26, 1930

The Prince of Youth

Yesterday I was the prince of my youth;
Today I’m the emperor of my years.
My empire but a domain of the truth,
A smile in the spring in winter but tears.

Withal still out looking for what I’ve lost
And counted the years like eggs in a tray,
I found all were empty shells, tempest-tossed,
Dreams that pass without a permit to stay.

I would that I could hark back one fullday,
She beside me talking about our future;
But alas! I was wounded by fate to stay
With a surgeon without a suture.

Youth and age without love naught but despair,
So why should I hence worry or care.

O World

O World! Our world has become a world of pain,
Murder torture empty houses and despair;
Our people herded slaughtered on hill and plain
O world! Is there no world in this world to care?

Grief calls for drinking, let us drink hard tonight
Cup of the future, forgetting our pain
And a cup dripping from the sinews of might
To show the world that our drink was not in vain.

Yes, friends tonight the cup tomorrow the blade;
Heaven born heroes of the old Cederland
Be ready to stand unyielding unafraid
To grasp the reins of your destiny in hand.

Through our homes have been burned and scarcely remain,
Withal out from the flames we shall rise again,
With our flags of love and liberty unfurled
Over our dear land to tease this cruel world.

Baalbeck
January 10, 1984

Ambition

 

Although you keep cradling it
Since the push over of your wisdom teeth,
You can’t keep it steadily under control
As it hops up by the wings of your success
Vice Versa it slopes down
To the level of your failure.
‘Tis the morse drumming cipher the beats of your heart
Within the medium of your contemplation
To keep the vigor of your endeavour;
Be aware of making anchor on the rocks
Doing nothing but twiddling your thumbs
Slothful to bait a hook of prudence
In the ocean of knowledge
Nor lay your nets of common sense
In the lake of self reliance
To make a hopeful catch of chance;
So be ambitious my boy and remember
That those ambitious immigrants
Made America by their ambition.

Baalbeck
1/7/1983

A Period Within a Question Mark

 

Last night I dreamt a dream;
Early morning ‘twas forgot,
I tried my memory to no avail;
I went out for a walk
To forget the worry of what was forgot
On the way I passed a weeping willow and wept
For a memory I buried there, and then
I passed a forest where I saw
A billowing reptile crossing the road.
Frightened, I ran into the wood deep;
I stood there and began to call for help;
A huntsman responded to my call
And one pull of his trigger made it.
By the time my heart was steady,
I heard a nightingale singing;
I listened and was pleased
And began to dream again
Of building airy castles, in Spain,
Near by a Catholic church
O the melody of the chiming bells!

I woke up and realized that
I was dreaming dreams within a dream;
That’s the true meaning of life;
A continuous reverie of tops and slopes.
Leading finally to the period
Within a question mark.

The Fiber of Will

Having lost the spring would I in the fall
Find a lone green leaf still hung on my tree,
When the stem drying core dried all in all
Leaving but the fiber of will in me.

I call to mind those moments of glory,
Climbing the tower of age with power
Alas! Those moments were transitory,
And I wait the coming time hour by hour.

Would age allow me a bonus of youth
Within a reason I’d try deciphering
The code of this fog-bound life and its truth,
Though such a trial might be saddening;

But why should I keep struggling with fate,
When I cannot take an adamat stand?
Be it as it comes be it soon or late,
It being but a shadow caught my hand.

Think Again

 

Man get wise to understand what it was
And how it could be wisely understood
Through an enigma of origin thought
Try to unfold how would a seed grow up
Out of the earth into the sky to drink
Falling back to begin from the beginning

All beg’nnings must have an end to begin
In a circle circling within the ring
The ring but space and the objects in it
We look at them agape without knowing
Of their end to know of their beginning
Lift your head up drink sky and think again

Would that be a burst from the womb of earth
Caught by a circle of the circling ring
Some say it’s a miracle and some say
‘Tis life caught within a circle to remain
Unknown from the beginning to the end
Lift your head up drink sky and then think again.

Baalbeck
August 20, 1984

The Green House of Creation

To pull out the fang of doubt in my mind
And under the influence of my soul,
I went out wandering in a forest near by
Seeking amongst the grass of history
The roots of mankind
Origin growth and mutation
Having thought of Darwin and Mendel,
I climbed up the tallest trees
To make the daily exercises of origin,
Replacing tail by a coil of thoughts
I hang up
I began swaying to and fro,
And felt that I was at the top of the world,
Shaking loose like a tassel of a Turkish fez,
Tantalizing a tribe of monkeys and apes,
Who were driven round the bend
And who mimicked me and stood agape
Overhead, remnant clouds drizzling
When all of a sudden I saw
Colours like bamboo reeds, arched up and down
That brought to memory the astronauts
Who made it up to the moon,
Hunting a speck in the universe,
Trying to bring to light the hidden secrets
Of the what the why the is and the was
Of nature and all the natural reactions
Which account for the existence
Of matter and life.
Excited I took a leap and made a loop up
Through the tubes
And down went I swimming to earth
With my courage teething fear
I pulled up to stand and walk,
When I felt a nightmare lying flat on my breast
«Who are you?»  I said,
«I am the shadow of your doubt;
I am the deep unconquerable well of life»
I called up my soul for council
And she said:
«Why worry about a lost key
When the lock was never found,
For the deceptive hidden gate of mystery
Where origin growth and mutation
Will ever remain the hidden secret
In the green house of creation?»

November 8, 1982

Who Can?

In the dark I can touch a star by sight
And I can slight a distant king by lip,
I can shoot down a passerine in flight
I can grow on wood on a mountain hip
But can I move one inch more than I can
If I can’t, can you please tell me who can?

Since the creation of the single cell
And its mutation into man and ape
Sages of old often tried to foretell
The hyle of life its origin and shape –
But they have utterly failed to unshell
The innermost of the gene in the shell

Life is not a secret but a true fact
But not within the reach of the small man
Scientific research has its counter act
As thus no one can save the Lord who can
More what can’t be moved by man – more exact
He can run a stream from an empty can.

Ergo, why should I slight a distant king?
Why should I shoot a passerine in flight?
I believe in Him without questioning,
To keep moral excellence in His sight.

Baalbeck
July 31, 1984

To a Friend

Why look far away into the no end
When you can’t view a hill beyond your sight?
Better look within your limits my friend
To distinguish the black from the white.

Walk the distance allowed within reason
And be lidless in your expedition;
Your hopes may star during a good season
Yet may be the highway to perdition;

Look how the years fly and we miss the glare;
Look how a child grows on the ash of the days;
Look at the mirror of life and be aware
Of the gloom ahead and the spreading haze.

So why look away into the no end
When you’re still featherless – should you pretend?

Baalbeck
October 20, 1984

The Temple in Baalbeck

Tourists were all eyes looking on Yesterday
The ancient enigma of the massive walls,
Where nature gave birth to Age residing stay
The strict guardian against Time in the halls.

Thunder bolts flashed to crack the adamant stone;
The flash was defied and the walls still stark stand
Against the contending years passing thus moan
Their failure to resolve the walls into sand.

The stones were quarried from hills of patience made
To build thus walls as thus by magic untold
This thisness by that thatness that held and stayed,
The aging heirloom against time never old.

Baal lived here down in the mouth left in rage;
Bacchus hacked the vine and buried the jars deep;
Zeus gathered sages and asked for a presage;
All said, «Shun the guardian who ne’er goes to sleep.

All creations are subject to birth and age
Various varieties that make the whole,
Thus the whole but groups of actors on the stage
Of them the fugitive gods who sent this call:

«Tourists, remember that the walls of Yesterday
Will ever be the home for Age living stay.»

Baalbeck
November 7, 1984

Cheating Time

If you can not cheat Time by your laughter
Why cheat your wrinkles, dyeing your gray hair?
If you be carefless to care threreafter,
Who care to care about your careless care?

Try talking to your shadow, the land’ll hear
Your secret wafted by the air descried,
So why be a yam-spinner, change, up cheer
The truth of shadow of God at your side.

The walks of life are of different shades;
Choose like the one leading to your dignity;
Missing links of truth whets the doubtful blades,
Cutting sinews of your integrity

Be true to yourself and keep your gray hair
To match well with the wrinkles of your face;
Old age should be revered without despair
Having had a natural touch of grace.

The Break of Dawn

Once the break of dawn o’er our hills was seen
The cock crew the darkness dwindled away
The perching sparrows on the trees had been
Wake-rife to fly and chorus on their way

On the wing rising up they brigaded
Winged shuttles swift in their flight o’er the plain
So admirable were they grey-bladed
Lost in heaven like angels back again.

That was the time of my coffee outside
Sitting alone; under the banyan tree
Nigh the adventitious roots along-side
Hung up soodling to the ground close to me;

The wind through the leaves made a swishing sound
Like snakes in front of gleaners gliding free
I listened well and presumed to have found
That the trees have a breath like you and me;

One quick look at heaven while thinking, I
Thought of creation wondering linkin
Wonder to wonder descried testify
That trees in their wake are reticent thinking.

Of the light spun forest of threads to be
The hued weft of life giving evidence
By the heart of man the pith of a tree
Alike in feed growth pulse and excellence.

That’s why I say and repeat that one day
Trees will tell sister trees to be heart-whole
And sneer at people who often say
That the living trees live without a soul;

Again a cup of coffee and again
The cock crew the birds arched and left away
And I left leaving a memory lane
For them to follow back home on their way.

Rome and John Keats

 

What were those sad strains of the heart I heard last night;
Would that still be the nightingales along the years;
Are mourning the death of their shepherd who did write
That soulful ode with the ink derived from his tears?
Possessed with the ecstasy of that sound,
I resolved to beat the bounds of this land
And with the gumption of dire Hannibal
I braved the mighty roar
On pilgrimage to the ancient city of Rome.
I wandered around and saw
The remaining relics, shattered stone remains,
Aging patiently and fading against
The blowing winds the pattering rains,
Odl rugged rocks staring haggardly,
Weeping pebbles, the years of yesterday.

Gazing at this fateful sequence
Of emperor empire master and slave,
With their edifice of triumph destroyed,
Would I be the first man to say
That time contains never contained
Having destiny and fate
The hands that give and take
The power that opens at will
Every door and shuts every gate?
Or it’s natural phenomenon,
Keeping whole the complexities of being
Governed and sheltered in a haven of perpetual mystery,
Processing through lanes tactfully designed,
Crossing the fallow of the vast to remain
Ever mysterious and forever its perdurable property.

That’s truly the wondrous tale of time
The years that come going,
Leaving behing colonies of stones,
Masons, philosophers, poets, scholars
Who have quarried the rocks of knowledge,
Built halls of wisdom
Everywhere on the hills of immortality
And then passed to remain
Lingering shadows of their remains
And now I am here, O Rome,
Walking on your hills, losing time gaining age.
One look at the shore;
One step in the grave yard
To kow-tow over the grave keen and pray
For a denizen who in your bosom doth lie
Bones of glory ribs of fame
Keats, O Rome!
The poet, the shepherd of the flocks
Them ever bereft nightingales ever heard,
Utering a continuous flood of moans,
As long as time wheels on,
And they breed new generations to sing
Of him who had a hasty look on time
And left a floating name
On the lake of weeping eyes.

Roma,
April 23, 1974

Why Come and Leave

Why come and leave leaving a wound behind
Catch collapse of your courage and believe
In the natural refl’ctions of the mind
Have your dreams satisfied and never grieve
Nor cloak your cherished desire in the blind

Passion should ne’er be yoked by oppression
We are born naked and should remain free
Our freedom’s our right and self possession
Hence we ‘ve no bones about our liberty
When the whole world’s refusing suppression

Come, come back to me beloved and forget
The worries of your hopes and dreams in min
And remember our thrill the time we met
And you left leaving a deep wound behind

Baalbeck
August, 1993

May Ziadeh

Me thinks that perfection descended from the skies
That is a nymph with a twin of dark piercing eyes
Paraissent le Dimanche in the French Images
As the quessn thought of all bards in all languages

Tell me, O tell me! by the planets that are above
Who is the heavenly herald who is the dove
That thrilled to our midst from yon horizon and sea
To cry live Egypt live independent and free

She is Venus and the marrow of liberty
She came to carve with letters of perpetuity
Over Egypt in the sky withal on the sea
Live Egypt down the ages and God be with thee

Nablus,
1931

Lord Byron

Byron, lord of verse I prize yoru wisdom
Isles of thought you have built out of the sea
By which and of which you ‘ve made a kingdom
Of the most efficacious poetry

What po’tic stones you ‘ve carved out of the wave
To have built your boulder rhymes of the sea
I trow that the Heav’ns that give giving gave
You the sapience of mind to write and be

The sovereign bard of the mighty road
Who mounted the steeds to Rome, Greece and Spain
Foot in stirrup trotting from shore to shore
A triumph made on the watery plain

Ever since, the world has written your name
On the wave that made the oc’an of your fame

London
December, 1997

To Dr. Nour Salman

Nour was my neighbor once upon a time
She was cute intellectual and bright
A lady of charm of grace lore and rhyme
Who excelled the muse in their po’tiv flight

‘Twas a dear moment the moment we met
Gazing at her face “good morning” she said
Since that moment I forgot to forget.
The thrill still thrilling gently in my head

She befriended the Alphabet and made
A school garden of letters scholars bred
Talented cultured united arrayed
Freed extremes kissed the book took oath and said

Nor your image shall e’er be in our mind
A to’ring pillar of education
A crown of culture and wisdom combined
Honored and acclaimed by all the nation

Baalbeck
April, 1995

Naimy

 

So sad to ‘ve the gloom on a sunny day
With the earth shuddering under my feet
For the sage who left fore’er yesterday
To join Gibran and Amin in their ‘treat

He trowed that Time but the breeding of thought
Inherently bred by the human mind
Thereof he weaved threads of glory and wrought
The shroud of knowledge in which he’s confined

Thus him who stood on the platform of Time
Holding in his right hand the flag of flame
For his sapient philosophy and rhyme
Which moved the whole world to applaud his name

Na’my the leading light dashing did seem
In the open space of wisdom to find
The equation of the univ’rse the theme
Of creation which are still in the blind

So he turned over the pages of life
And with the wings of thought to the no end
Yon the stars and byond keeping the strife
To conquer all the more and comprehend

How to climb the slopes of the future heights
There upon penetrate into the core
Of the infinite where the visioned sights
Were his target endeavor to explore

Baalbeck
February, 1988

 

Muntaha

 

O Child, why like a spear the air cleaving
To lands unknown beyond our beloved shore
Behind your mother and home why leaving
Leaving the spear of distance in our core.

Come back, come back to us, our darling dear
Your daughter and sisters always weeping
Weeping the travel wings of doubt and fear
A timeless vigil in sleep kept keeping.

Our home but a memory of the past
And the past but a shadow of you here
Pacing the hall to and fro, slow and fast,
And we call him by name but he doesn’t hear.

O child! O heart! beyond our will offshore
The skirt of hope we wear but we can’t touch
Take out the spear of distance from our core
For we love you child much more than too much.

 

A Shadow of Light

Awake, and how I look fronting me, beams
A shadow of light every which way seems
The Lord walking the seventh floor of sky,
Frowning He looked at the world and passed-by.

Near behind was trailing a storm with rage
And a knight-errant gloom aging to cage
The land and no gay stars to lead my way;
By ballot in mind I resolved to stay.

Meanwhile, thunder struck storm echoed a sound;
I stood self-possessed like a pyramid bound,
Listening well and a voice in the sound said:
"But why should they kill and torture the dead?

"I gave them power to reason and love
The word made FLESH and heavens above;
Why reject the divine message and hence
Wreck and ruin the world by violence?"

Still awake and how I look away beams
A Shadow of light every which way seems
The Lord walking the seventh floor of sky
Frowning He looked at me and said, goodbye!

 

A Dream of Youth

With the errant breeze
Odiferous was her breath
Across a ridge of flowers
Looking at her possessed
She gave the glad eye
I dialed a wish
She willed with a strong desire
And we crossed the frontiers
'Twas hot
Mid-summer
At half past the hour
We met
My hand around her waist,
Her finger tapping below my ear
On tip toe she stood
A heart melting model we made
What a cast of souls we did feel
Lip to lip, heart to heart beating
O! What passion what a fair deal
Of happiness without cheating
Having staged our affaire de coeur
We left hold of our pyramid and moved on
Passersby whistled and cried
Gossip filled the town
And a rush of people hurried out
To see what was strange
We came with them to the spot

 

Robert Frost

Frost, I freeze with the mention of your name,
        Yet with the sunshine glittering from your ink;
I warm up and revert to my selfsame
        To write of you in verse truly what I think.

Oft I roam in the farm you left behind
         And on the old rocks you were sitting I stand,
Looking the universe you had in mind,
         Where I see the world but a speck at the strand.

At eve came the tramps asking where to find,
         The man who disagreed to give them a hand;
And I looked at them and said, there behind
         That rugged wall, there's a mound of earth and sand.

I gazed at the moon slanting far away
         With the shuttling beams, warping threads of the gleam,
Weaving the years he lived a tongue, to say,
         Here lies Robert Frost, the everlasting dream.

Yes, he lies stilly with time never dead,
         Never a fountain of wisdom seres to flow,
Never a print can be marred of what's said,
         And what he has said in print, will ever glow.

Frost the poet and the bard, I declare,
         That he built forever the greatest empire,
The crown was offered to him and the chair,
         Which will never be destroyed by time or fire.

Than the strangers left walking in the gleam,
         And the gleam was dimming behind and before;
They faded away with their hopes and dream,
         And back to the mountain land, they came no more.

The Clever Finger

A to Z
a distance of rounds
Out within outer
Layers around
finger bent to thumb
look through
a ring back
of hill and slack
forest and sky
a thieving sight
a painting made.

The bee buzzing round back
bearing pollen flower suck
a theft made honey.

The cow thieves the grass to milk
the earth thieves the water to yield grain
and nature thieves time to make
the world a flower.

Nowadays
to be a man of excellence, my boy,
make a round
hail, smile shake hands
make a finger count
be professional
to make a thief
thieve, the thieves
all thieves around
will call you, "the Clever finger."

 

Breath and Clay

Since birth and we are consumed like a pyre
Out of nothingness into nothingness

We return but ash of the burning fire.
What a bewildering timeless process!
That's why we ponder again and again
The theme of science to the wide extreme;
Perhaps with a test tube we might attain
A spark of hope in the ash of our dream.
Though conscious of time and the whistle-stop
The curb leading road to our destiny,

We can't help but go on and on to drop

From the eaves of the world falling down free.

The soul from its burden of blood and clay
Out of the human chest into the chest

Of heaven led by the First Cause to stay
Where there's a divine sway of love and rest.

Yet we keep tracing the mystery claimed
Of a godless secret we still ignore,
The eighth puzzling miracle still unnamed,
Breath and clay a merger made at the shore.

2/1985

In Memory of My Wife, Maliha

How oft I watched the sunrise beyond yon
And yon I haven't seen but the heaving foam
Where the ship with my heart is sailing on
To harbor at sunset away from home.

And how oft I came to think but never thought
The thoughts I am thinking now of my loss,
Deserted with the strings of hope
I caught Like a penitent at a weeping cross.

This blank Janus, faced world should I abhor
Or steep in Lethe to swoon and forget
That there was such a joke having in store
But empty hopes and the dreams we regret.

Dreadful to bear the thought of a long sleep,
To hush the divine voice of love in pain,
The blitz of doom in a bosom to keep
With a coal living fire ablaze in the brain.

I am perceiving the years of grief ahead
And I'll dwell on them the rest of my life.
How can I forget the moment she said
"Shed no tears, that's the true meaning of life."

I shall live hence and let my voice be heard.
Charged with my forlorn melody to span
All over the earth with my saddest word
To mourn the dead heart of every living man.
9/1982

 

Adam and His Progeny

Two bodies one of the other sprung
Tempted by a serpent
God's Command disobeyed
A frailty caused the fall
Adam on earth
A period and a question mark
Overcame the deluge by the ark
Aging progeny has grown
Waves of the human tide foamed
Over the ocean of mortality
Surging generations billowing to the shore
Breaking through gravitation caged recoil
Being caught by the dragnet of nature.

We read this story to remember we forgot
And since the brain is seething in a beaker of common sense
The ingredients of reason in the mind
Hopes and dreams cooked realized
Doubt fumed knowledge distilled
Theories established laws declared
A ladder of facts and we climb on and up
On the drumming beats of our hearts
On the moon we make a short stop
We hoist a flag and take snapshots
Look around and carry the years in a bag of sand
Scud again into the clear dive homeward and plunge
Where the waiting crowds applaud
A crater of water on the Atlantic made.

People of earth, better listen and awake
Science is the devil's decoy of persuasion
An imp of subtle ideas in each mind
Offering the glass of pleasure a poisoned grape
And man gulled swallows the potions prepared
Being drugged never dreams but of fame
When the world is stifling by the flame
So the question mark remains
The mystery of the world on the stage
Where the tragedy of life is played
With Satan dissimulated setting the plot
The climax of dynamite, the last episode.

Gentlemen, I am talking to you now
I know that you are busy with your test tubes
But you may spare a moment to look up
A loft not too high, not too low
Only overhead the danger of the spreading smoke
Be wise and read the past to make the future mean
A finger bite later on would be too late, too late
Having lost paradise
Why make a fatal pratfall again
Dot the period a fullstop and pull down the blind?

Who Are They?

Who fight for the rights of man and they abuse them
They break all the laws and pretend to protect them
They eat the fish and they sell the scales a dear gem
They smash and grab nations and others they condemn
And they say we have made this civilization

They've polluted the world by their so called wisdom
They have poisoned the people with chemicals made
They have ruined the conduct of man and seldom
Like the Vikings they haven't made a disturbing raid
And they say we have made this civilization

They killed millions of people in the first world war
And they killed even more in the second world war
Prepared criminals like them were not known before
Look at their warships sheltered to pillage e'ery shore
And they say we have made this civilization

God was patient with Greece and the Roman Empire
He was patient with the Ottoman Turk to rule
He was pat'ent with Hitler who had a voice like fire
Where are those powers who have gone like a whirlpool
Can they say now we h've made this civilization?

This is only a hint for those dec'itful powers
To change their attitude toward the weaker nations
Tomorrow they'll be welting like passion flowers
Be'ng destined to fall with their civilization
8/1984

My Good Neighbors

My good neighbors fled away,
Professeurs et Chanteurs,
And since my days that were of constant pleasure
Were faintly feeding on memory
With so often my thoughts reeved through the
Swallow of my mind
Searching for a fading reality,
Caught with the arm of melancholy
Across a barren field of despair;
Once a forest behind our fence
Where the wood choppers hacked the wood
And the dead trunks lay down on the ground
As if they were soldiers killed
During the civil wars
In Lebanon, Nicaragua or Spain.

That picture of the forest
Is still hovering in my mind;
Of the birds banished,
Of their kingdom destroyed,
By that cruel hand of man,
Whose illusory fingers seemed
In the distance like snakes
Gliding through my body
Through every vein.
I looked up to the sky;
There was no reply;
I looked everywhere;
I saw nothing but the forest
Of scraggy teeth, the stumps that remain,
And my hopes remained
Blown by the wind,
Scraping like chaff on sand.
And ever since, I wake up,
Looking into a panorama of memories,
Growing a wood of yearning thoughts
In a lingering reverie of the past.
10/1974

From "A Child Forlorn"

Men through the ages my story should read,
A child forlorn driven out of my land,
Walking the years in memories to bleed
And the world refused to give me a hand

I walked on the desert of time e'erywhere
Not a tree, not a blossom, not a stream,
Nothing but the barren sands and despair
And the im'ge of my father in my dream.

My old father was killed at Deir Yassin,
My mother , my sister were also slain,
The world was blind but the blood I have seen
Gushing out from those dearest hearts again.

The U.N. should have been the sword to shield
The rights of man and his integrity,
The heavily armed brigade on the field
To smash the oppressors of liberty.

But 'tis a tavern for talk, wine and dice,
The Superpowers take their drinks and go,
The small and weaker nations pay the price
Then comes Sam and the Bear to close the show.

A child I was lost-but now a man found,
I have learned that men since out of the caves
Were the poor serfs of power and the pound
But now they are slaves ruled by master slaves

How could I forget the floor smeared with blood
At home where I was born to live and die,
The shattered graves I have seen when a flood
Of images I dream was in my eye

That's why I chose the sharpened sword at last
To regain my land, home and liberty
And show the world that I'm not an outcast
But a hero of might on land and sea.

Beirut
1950

Super Powers

Should Isr'fel break the news of a peril soon
What would happen to you Cocks leading the walk
Would you hence keep chanting "au claire de la lune"
Or would you keep silent and afraid to talk?

Better stop hugging your ill'sions of Power
And remember those dreadful tyrants of might
Who oft'n fanned the flame and burned their own tower
Hence be wise and halt measuring your short height

Nip in the bud your disguised quarr'ls and be friends
The world's waiting for your nuclear accord
Make Irish and spit on your palm and shake hands
To endorse your word and attain your reward

Otherwise the lips of time for ever ‘ll speak
About the murd'r of your common sense in jail
Be careful and stop your game to hide and seek
To avoid being the cocks who crow and fail

Beirut
April, 1987

The Angel Spoke

"Why be a word spoken wearing a shroud
Of worries liv'ng a stranger in your home
Shun being vexed e'er like a beetle browed
Make it right and beat it over the foam
Where old timers'll be waiting at the shore
To welcome and love you forever more

Your pals who upon your departure wept
Were stunned at the reason for which you left
Cleaving the dreadful billows you have cleft
To the old world where you are worried now
A stranger in your home; 0 friend! but how
A man like you would yield to what's in-ept"

Go back your pals '11 be waiting at the shore
To welcome and love you forever more"

Baalbeck
August, 1987

 

The City of Seven Gates

By crystal gazing was eyed an image
Of a prophecy told long long before
By the sages of a remote dim age
That Salah shall be coming to restore
The freedom of the Arab land again

Should we believe in sages when we read
About the man who was the blade of time
The time our homeland was shattered to bleed
And all the Arabs 'ere busy making rhyme
Forgetting the blaze of their matchless fame

Why should we be like a truant look lost
On the floor of fate leaving not a trace
Though we had oceans of knowledge left tossed
Drying slowly like the Dead Sea in space

Why not our tradition of mark retrace
And be eagle eyed of vision to see
The star of our ancient glory in space
Why not keep our self reference and be
Like Tarik who cried here was heard in Spain

Where are those men of old where are they hence
Those who were bold as brass on land and main
And who've won their grandeur and eminence
By the blade of their will during their reign
Shouldn't we have leaders of their kind again?

Besides shouldn't we trow in sages we read
About the prophecy told long before
Wasn't our great Salah who believed and freed
The gates of old Salem in days of yore?

Beirut
September, 1983

Break A Stone

Break a stone, the shattered chips’ll counteract
The wrack of a natural existence
By the vexed flying bits of resistance
To keep the original state intact

All beings have self defense as can be
Man, animal, plant matter all react
When usurped of their freedom and attacked
To preserve unscathed their own entity

Nature willingly never willed a change
Since the primal chaos was pacified
To form this cosmos by laws fortified
Though, the confsion was suppressed yet so strange

To find puffing nations like turkey cocks
With their chaotic and chimeric views
Trying to chase out the hawks from their mews
Who ruled the skies and tamed the highest rocks

Fools never take the bent of circumstance
Nor would they stop their untenanted claim
Gulled reaping the air, gleaning grains of shame
On the barren sands of their petulance

That's why centuries they spent in dismay
Without a sun, a moon, a star, a ray
Self stabbed in the dark living death to stay
Forever bleeding the years of yesterday

Dispersed everywhere up the devil's sleeve
Punch-drunk and strayed from the purpose they seek
Though in the wrong they would not eat the leek
Nescient un'ware to vision nor conceive

That a rampant gale wouldn't alarm the sea
Nor a spid'ry nation could weave a plan
To confuse the world nor any one can
Fetter fate to have a new destiny

Baalbeck
October, 1988

Countrymen

Why should you tarry so long in your defile
Speed to the heights showing how to climb the slopes
On top look at the UN's tavern and smile
Where all the weaker nations have lost their hopes

Be not like a slumbering cloud on a crag
Breathing out in the air drying without rain
That's how vapid nations lag behind and sag
Like a welting flower drying on the plain

Be like a storm cloud out of the sea with rain
Winter finished, the budding spring will flower
Haste then to build as once you have built in Spain
With blocks of wisdom for the world a tower

A light house for those astray to gain the light
A palace of justice for the rights of man
A peace keeping force with full powers and might
To indicate to the whole world that we can

Teach the people how to climb the highest slopes
To build on top a love nest for all to dwell
In a world of democracy full of hopes
A paradise inside this our present hell.

Baalbeck
January, 1984

Crossing the Canal

October War 1973

Egypt the brave, the triumphant the great
Holding the reins of time in a clever hand
Having completely prepared signaled date
Six October She cried and the world hushed
Listening for the first shot across the canal
Which registered for the Arabs a new fate

Shadows of ghastly shapes flying were seen
Stretching range no dust rising from their sweep
Seeming hawks falling wings bursting shells
Shrapnel scattered deadly weapons had been
Leaving fetid ledges of the dead on the scene
Barley burning huddled ashes heap against heap
And over Sinai the austral winds wafted
The sweet sabulous scent of liberty

Egypt trust in God but not in a deceiving sprite
Seeming fey withal a snake hidden amid grass
Be aware of the fangs trickling bane honey taste
And drop the potion given in drafts for a grain of sand
Remember Salah ed-Din the wing of might
Who healed the wounds of this country in days of yore
By the whistling blade of his native song
When the Holy city of the oppressors he freed

Egypt grasp the hilt again and sharpen the shining steel
Have the river Jordan a current of glints flowing gore
Move fast over sand moor and mere beyond every pale
Tarnish the sun with the darkest gloom of dust
Rebellious under the rioting hooves of your Arabian breed
And hurl the seven gates open for all nations entrance free
Having freed Jerusalem you would have freed the World
And the world will outright repeat "Egypt the great".

Beirut
October, 1973

عند "الوداع"

إن رست جبال المشيب على كتفيك وعصفت عواصف الزمان في دنياك يوماً ونال منك الوهن فما لك من نصير يا صاحبي إلا الشجاعة والصبر، حديقة العقل طعم ثمارها حصافة الفكر وبعث الآمال
من مناهل الرشد.
لذا خذ المداد من عصارة العصور حكمةً وامسك بصوارم الإيمان واكتب على وميض نصالها العمر كله رمال صحراء وآمال وسراب لذا كن أشد من الحوام وافرح إن تركت وسم برثن على ورك جبل ليبقى ثروة الحياة مع البقاء. هنا دع الشك عنك وانظر إلى أبواب السماء مؤمنأ بالله وأنت على مرقاة الأيام قف وانظر إلى هناك، هناك على طريق السنين أجذال تحترق في غابة الحياة والدخان يغطي السهول
والأرياف والعاصفة أبداً عاتية والغيوم باقية خصام بينها وارتطام بريق ثم ظلام هنا تنشق يا صاحبي رياح الشباب وانس الكهولة  والعذاب واذكر صهيل الخيل وهمس العذارى وحنين الأحباب وعند الوداع
قف بشجاعة قبل الغروب واستغفر الله عند الغياب .

منتخبات من شعر جودت حيدر

من قصيدة له يخاطب البحر، فيقول :
"كن سريعا" كلحاظ العين ارتفاعاً
وانظر من الافق إلى الهوادي، في البحر، أبدًا عطشى للحرية
تسجد، وبقدرة قادر تنهض كالمصلين ما بين المد والجزر ..
الله أكبر، الله أكبر، الله أكبر ....
لقد ايقنت أن الهوادي آمنت بالانجيل والقرآن ديناً... وأنا أنظر اليها تركع بخشوع وتعمد الشواطئ وتصلي صلاة الغروب والفجر على الرمال.
تتراجع لتبشر بالتقوى ما بين الأسماك وسائر الكائنات في البحر.
هكذا، عظمة عظام الوجنتين تبقى مع الدين عبادةً، ومع الحرية يقظةً وجهاداً. والخيول أبداً في الطراد تحثها الركاب لتواكب الرياح مسيرة وأنفاسها براكين بخار تتصاعد سحباً سابحات في الفضاء تتلاطم وتتلاحم أصواتها رعوداً، وبرقها يستشعر كسيوف الشعراء بالفكر الثاقب الوضاح .
سبحانك ربي، هذه الحاميات للبحار والغاديات للبراري كيف تحن لمرابطها ورضيعها، وتهادن الشواطئ لتلملم عباها وتجري، وهي كالتراب على الممرات تنقلب، عمائم بيضاء، فرق جهاد موحدة وموحدة توشوش بعضها بعضاً أسرار الخلاص من العبو دية، فتنصهر مع التكوين لتكون من لجب البحار مدار قوة كالمرقات على حائط الزمان ترتكز.

ومن أعلى درجاتها سمعت الأسماك وسائر الكائنات في البحر تنادي: "نحن تعمدنا وآمنا"، وآمن البحر على يد شاعر عربي .

لبنان 30 كانون التانى 1992

أين نحن قاطنون..؟

خذ النجيع من رعاف الفكر الثاقب وأزرق وريد الضعف في أمة آض يباس ربيعها وهرعت الى خريفها وهي لا تدري، يا ويلتاه كيف مر الزمان بها واستحالت وعرة قمر تستمد نو رها الخافت من سراج البداوة وظاهر السراب في شعاع الشمس على لرمال، أمة في ماضي الأيام هبط الوحي عليها واستحوذت على الايمان والعلوم واجتازت عتمة العماء بسلطانها، وحلت في مضافة النجوم يوماً واسرجت خيول الريح وانطلقت على المجرة إلى الزهرة وصوبت سهام مجدها إلى تخوم الفضاء وصرخت يا قدر لقد أصبحنا بعد اليوم نحن والنجوم جيران. أمة بنت قصور العدالة وقلاع مصير عاشت زمانها بعزة مع القدر وحكمت  بالرشد والوجدان وحافظت على حقوق الإنسان كان من كان، هنا ظهر طمو ح بين الأفراد والطموح كثيراً ما يكون قاتلاً، وابتدأ العدوان، زعامات حطمت زعامات، وثورات مزقت وحدة الوطن وهوت الأمة فريسة شعوب رسمت لها خرائط الأوهام حدوداً، يا شعب إني أرى الكسوف وأنا في مشيب الحياة لا أرى حدوداً بل أرى هناك هناك في البعيد على النيل والفرات ودجلة سدوداً، أرى من بحر الظلمات إلى الخليج دويلات مبعثرة في أغوار المفازة خيالات في الظل ما لها وجود، يا شعب أين نحن قاطنون اليوم، والجواب عندي نحن قاطنو ن في قبور الجدود ونواطير القبور علينا شهود والأمم التي وجدت في خفايا المسافات عنا أصبحت في نيران الشمس وشموس في الوجود، هذا جزاء من يطرح ويضرب ويتو ه في الحساب ويشرب عصير الأحلام ويحلم ويمشي وهو يغني أغنية التم ولا يشعر بالحتوف والرحيل، هل هذا هو نظام الكون الذي جعل حياة الأمم كفصول السنين تمر مع الأيام وتسقط أوراق تاريخ على شاطئ الزمان موات أم أن الشيطان الرجيم لعب على حبال الخداع وعتم شعاع لغة أوحت السماء بها لأمة صاغت من الشعاع تاج النصر في الأندلس لغة الوحي تحيي أمتها كما تحيا العنقاء بعد الحريق من الرماد، لغة هذه الأمة يا قوم ما كانت يوماً إلا منجم العقل مولد الآمال شعلة تراث وقودها من ذاكرة العصور، هاتف الأجيال يصرخ على المدى ويدعو الأمة للنهوض من سباتها من خريفها الحضيض من الأكفان للحياة.
يا سادة اللغة الحياة، من دون غديرها لا تكون، عسى أن يطل الصبر علينا من الصمت جاثماً على قمم الجبال يصرخ يا عرب لما هذا الهجوع في الكهوف وانتم لا تبالون؟؟

خليل المطران

توالفت الأوزان والقوافي اجنحة النظيم بالفكر انطادت رفوف بيان وانتشرت على مشارف الجمال في مشارق الأرض ومغاربها وهوت على ضفاف النيل وبردى بعدما اصطادها الخليل ونقش برياشها على قمم البلاغة كنوز الكون خفايا الطبيعة من الابداع ، وغزا بالشعر المستفيض بحور البيداء. هذا خليل شاعر القطرين الموحى اليه من غدير خزينة الصافي شيد منارة هداية نورها استحال مجرات نجوم وكل نجم منها سراجه شعر من أشعاره سابحات في الفضاء كالغيوم تتصافح وتبتسم ثم تندم وتطبق شفاها فترعد وتمطر دموع المحبة ما بين الانسان وأخيه الانسان فى وطن واحد موحد الى الأبد.
لذا اقول الحياة زمان وقدر تحترق كالهشيم والنادر منها يبقى وميض ماس في الرماد، هكذا ودع الخليل الأحبة والجيران وترك إرثه من الرشد أمة عطشى للإرشاد، ترك محيطات من الثقافة والرموز بعدما ابحر في بحور الأبجدية وأخذ يستقي من هديرها صفاء الفكر ومن عواصفها خبرة الأيام على دروب الأجيال فكان حصادها سنابل يانعة من الروية والايقاع ، ومناهل في الحذاقة بعدما صاغ دنيا الحروف وجعل من قرائتها صلاة ومن بنائها يقين ، هذا الجهد المبدع اخذ بعقلي الى الذهول وجعل مسار فكري كمسار الجواثم اسير احلامي بين قرب وبعد، رحم الله خليل المطران من حاك من شعاع بعلبك افكاره فكانت ثروته في الحياة والخلود، رحمات الله عليه .

 

بعض من خواطره

أحن إليكما كل عشية وضحاها وكلما هب الريح ومر الهوا على ترابكما وتيمم وصلى وناح ء وكلما طير الليل على الأغصان شدا وغدا ما بين الأحراش والوديان وبعد ورجع الصدى من التراب أشواق وحنين وانين.
ناديت "يا جيران يا قلعة بعلبك يا حجر، من القاطنون في البيت اليوم؟"

قالوا بسام وامه في سفر ... والبيت حزين وخال ليس فيه أحد، ليس فيه إلا الغبار والقضاء والقدر."

بكيت ومشيت فكراً مع من كان لو كان اليوم ما كان الذي كان ما كان.

بعلبك

مع الفجر باكراً عند فتح واطباق الجفون وسنا على العيون *والشوارع مسرعةً داخل النور للخفاء، طاف نظري وطاح بقلعة جاثمة على صدر الزمان من البارحة الى غد مع الزمان مديد. هنا تآكلت العصور مع الصخور وانتصر الحجر. هنا تموت الأيام ويموت الانسان وتبقى عواميد البقاء مع الزمان قيثارة الريح تندف من الريح الحان الطيب فتهبط كالنعاس على الجفون وتكبل الطيور برخم أوتارها تغريداً فتصبح عاجزةً عن النهوض من الركو ن . قلعة تصادقت مع الزمان دهوراً في وسط اخضرار فسيح يمتد مع الغيوم تجوالاً، والغيوم كالشاش والشف الناعم تلف التلال والوهاد وتتخل شعاع الشمس ليهبط مع النسيم بطراوة ولين ويمتد الى صنين الى جبين الأرز، جبل عال يعيسش بعزلة ويطل من الافق من القرنة السوداء بعين الود والحنان ويعانق الأرز ويبتسم بسمة حياة نقشت عليها خريطة جمال فرزتها عقلنية الطبيعة . . . . قطعة من الزمان عاشها القدر. :هذا الجمال سكبته في كأس الخيال حقيقة ومن الحقيقة صغت كلمات ي . صنعت أشعاري لوطن ولدت فيه وفيه قدري. ومن هنا نظرت الى الأبيض المتوسط، فما كان عجبي إلا مع حوامل الخيول في اطراد يمر الزمان من تحت حوافرها وهي لا تدري. كالشعراء يشيدون قصور الابداع ويمضون تاركين تراثهم على ترابهم وميض وسم يبقى في الكون كون له نجوم العلوم ء وبحار الشعر طافية على شواطئ الوجود تتصاعد وتتهمر أصواتها بلاغة مطران ، وفلسفة نعيمة ونبوة وحنين جبران .

* الشوارع: النجوم التي تختفي عند الفجر.

جودت حيدر 21/6/1993 .

 

وجودى لا وجود

وشوش وشوش وشوش شواطئك الرملية يا بحر
بأمواج من السبق غازيات الرمال تيها
تتراجع قهراً بقعقعة فهمها غامض
آه لو علمت ما بها لعلمت سر الوجود والخلود
شريط الحياة وجود لا خلود
خذ من البحر عبرة وامش يا صاح .
على دروب الحياة حكيماً في الوجود
وخذ من الطبيعة اخرى
الشتاء مع قسوته يعطي الحياة عيشها
والربيع وردة خلقت لتموت
لولا قطرة الشتاء لا حياة لا ربيع لا وجود
مشيت مع الزمان شتاء
وقطرة الشتاء ما كان لها وجود
يا زماني ماتت وردتي وأنا تراني ذاهلاً
في وجودي لا وجود

1 حزيران 1984
جودت حيدر

 

 

 

جودت حيدر 21/6/1993 .

 

البحر

«كن سريعاً» كلحاظ العين ارتفاعاً
وانظر من الأفق إلى الهوادي في البحر، أبداً عطشى للحرية
تسجد، وبقوة قادر تنهض كالمصلين ما بين المد والجزر...
الله أكبر، الله أكبر، الله أكبر...
لقد أيقنت أن الهوادى آمنت بالإنجيل والقرآن ديناً. . . وأنا
أنظر إليها تركع بخشوع وتعمد الشواطئ وتصلي
صلاة الغروب والفجر على الرمال.
تتراجع لتبشر بالتقوى، ما بين الأسماك وسائر الكائنات في
البحر.

هكذا، عظمة عظام الوجنتين تبقى مع الدين عبادةً، ومع
الحرية يقظةً وجهاداً. والخيول أبداً في الطراد تحثها الركاب
لتواكب الرياح مسيرة وأنفاسها براكين بخار تتصاعد سحباً
سابحات فى الفضاء تتلاطم وتتلاحم أصواتها رعوداً،
وبرقها يستشعر كسيوف الشعراء بالفكر الثاقب الوضاح .

سبحانك ربي، هذه الحاميات للبحار والغاديات للبراري كيف
تحن إلى مرابطها ورضيعها، وتهادن الشواطئ لتلملم عباها
وتجري، وهي كالتراب على المحراث تنقلب، عمائم بيضاء،
فرق جهاد معمدة موحدة وموحدة توشوش بعضها بعضاً
أسرار الخلاص من العبودية، فتنصهر مع التكوين لتكون من
لجب البحار مدار قوة كالمرقات على حائط الزمان ترتكز.

ومن أعلى درجاتها سمعت الأسماك وسائر الكائنات في
البحر تنادي: «نحن تعمدنا وآمنا، وآمن البحر على يد شاعر عربي».

رثاء زوجته

تنبعث الحياة مع الزمان نموا
وبمراث الطبيعة تشب وتشيب
لتتوارى بعداً
تردادها مع الريح في غياهب الكون،
خزين عمر يرجع الميت حياً
وأنت، أنت العطرة التي نمت، وفي
ربيعها هوت، وفي عطرها انطوت،
وتجسدت رمز قداسة، وبعد البعاد أصبحت
الحطب.
وكلما رفَ الهوى أدركت معنى الأسى
وكان عيشنا كالشمس طرواة عند
الغروب، وبعد الغروب صفاء
تلك ليالي النجوم والسهر
وعندليب الغاب ينشد الحان الطيب
حتى يغيب القمر، ويطل من المغيب.
هذه الذكريات، كم أتوق إليها
في عزلتي، أحلم بحب كان كالفرات أمواجا تتصاعد.
هنا طال صبري، وتناولت الصبر، وأنا صابر
في غابة الصبر ومن أتاني يراني كالزمان صابر
على صبري.
وأنت يا حبيبتي لا تحزن .
هذا قضاء وقدر.
والحياة ارتفاع جبال وحنو واد.
هذا الكون متناقضات نفي وإيجاب
ولو لم يكن هكذا لما كان.
ما هو إلا هذا العمق لا يحده مدلول،
إلا أكفان العبر في دنيا السكون.
والآن كالنحلة انطلاقاً
أمضي إلى الجبال والقمم.
وبالإزميل أحفر على صخور البقاء
حكاية حبي وما كانت إلا حبآ عقلانياً
ضميره الوفاء.
لا حب قيس وليلى مزيج من الجنون والبكاء.
هذا، وجاء ملاك الرعب، ورحلت مع الأيام
في خريف عمري كروض حور
ضعيف البنية يجف رويدً رويداً على
طريق الهلاك صابر محتار قبالة تعاظم الريح
تهب عاصفة لتجعل من باقي أيامي ركامها.
حبيبتي لا تحزني لأن التلاقي بعد
المنية، والخلد سرمدي معنى لا وجود
والطبيعة ء أبداً، مصدر الخلق، والتفكك
والرجوع، ولو لم تكن هكذا لما كانت لتكون
كما هي معنى ووجود.
وأنت وأنا، ذكرى حياة
رجعت لباطن الأرض جسدا
ً ولباطن السماء روحآ
أتت من عند ربها زمنا وذهبت .

بعض من أقواله

العمر يحترق كالهشيم والنادر منه يبقى وميض ماس في الرماد
«الملايين من البشر تولد وتمر ما بين فكي القدر وتتوارى تباعأ إلى غابة النسيان. والقليل القليل منها يبقى مع العصور وليفاً ومع الأجيال الصاعدة مثالاً يحتذى به، لأن موارد الحياة من الفكر النير هي التي كانت نعمة الذين تركوا كوزهم الفكرية والحياتية شعلة على طريق الآتين، وذهبوا تاركين وراءهم موسوعة معرفة، على شاطئ الخلود مشعشعة أنوارها في دنيا الحصافة قناديل من الحكمة في مجاهل الكون نجوم.»

«عسى أن يطل الصبر علينا من الصمت ويجدينا»
«كم وكم من غدٍ وغدٍ
سيبقى سر الحياة
في الكون دفيناً»

كل شعر كتبته كان خطوات عبر روحي...
في العفل أكثر من خيالات علي هذا الحضر جسداً
معلق يين الحرف والتالي . تمر عليه الحياة عبر وميض وسراب.

«للعقل مقدرة تختلف من فردٍ للأخر. والعقل عجينة قابلة للتطويع ويمكن أن يطبع على سطحها أي شيء نضعه عليها. والإنسان وحده القادر على تطوير هذه العجينة وتشكيلها كيفما شاء. لقد عشت في أميركا فترة طويلة الأمر الذي سهل علي اكتساب اللغة حتى تطور الأمر في النهاية وأذاب أي فجوة بين اللغة والفكر وأصبحت اللغة هي الفكر والفكر هو اللغة ...»

«المرأة ولدت من عيون الزمان . . .وحطت في داخلي كما حطت الشمس في داخل الدنيا لتحييها»

من يحارب ديناً من الأديان السماوية مثله مثل من يطلق النار على نجمٍ ليجعل من شعاعه فيض عتمة من الظلام.