In Your Shadow, a Day Without Grave Consequences

Thinking of sojourns at odious places,
I say, “Oh, those were not entirely absurd.”

I enter the marine city of the old,
bringing in at sunset irrigated bodies,
men and women, noisy at night --
salt-free effigies.

Half of the red curtain
is flagging and paling
outside the window,
in a breeze invading the darkened room
where I wake up to words,
to the proof of my manhood.

Words on parchments are handed over
to the heirs and heiresses,
mob of boys and girls, those decimated,
now amicably trying their muscles on each other.

Guard in wooden boxes the light of their eyes.
Set the seagulls free, down there
where stones encroach the sea.

In the dead of night,
I hear them all breathing.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
San José, Sunday, September 5, 2004