A River Dies of Thirst (6 page)

When I listen to music gardens open out around me, and the melody becomes a flower I hear with my eyes. Sound has an image, and this image has a sound, which slowly gathers momentum like waves, more far-reaching than a literary metaphor. Carnations leave their flower beds and are distributed on the tables of high-class restaurants to compensate a stranger for some forgotten loss, or make a diner waiting for his companion better prepared to face the uncertainties of their encounter. Nobody stops the narcissus listening for hours to a song of joy in the water and believing it is a song of praise. When white lilies fill a room with their huge, pungent scent, I am confused by my thoughts about them, the opposite of violets, which make me pause where two sounds intersect and dissolve, indistinguishable as the tears shed at weddings and funerals, and the opposite of anemones, which are content with a song on the broad margins, a pastorale on the low mountain slopes. All of this is so I can say: the red rose is visible music, and jasmine is a message of longing from nobody to nobody.

for Sargon Boulos

It is a long road to where. High ground

and low ground. Day and night on either side

A short winter and a long summer. Palm trees

and cypresses, and sunflowers on either side

Gas stations, cafés and clinics

and traffic police on either side. And a prison

a small one, and a shop for tobacco and tea, and a school

for boys, and cellars for girls, and a sign

displaying the temperature, and a billboard for foreigners: Welcome

to the road to where. High ground

and low ground. And the remains of the dead who saw their death

standing in the road, and greeted it

Death said: ‘Where are you going?’ They said: ‘To where!’

We walk along as if we are alike. As if there/here

are the same. As if the road is the goal

without end, but where are we going, and where

are we from? We are the inhabitants of this

long road to a goal that bears a single name:

Where.

Graveyards have the dignity of air, the authority of dust. You say farewell to your friend, Mamduh, and await your turn. The smell of wilting flowers and the rustling of trees transport you far away, to the place that lies beyond matter, to your final address in some part of nothingness. But you are thinking about something simpler: graves are mattresses. They seem like comfortable places to sleep. An occupant of such a grave would not lie staring up at his earthy sky and, like his counterpart in the graveyard near the Place du Trocadéro in Paris, would be part of everyday life, being so close to cafés, museums and the social interplay of the living. Life is within reach of his marble headstone, and the abundance of flowers, trees, birds and people surrounding him makes it unnecessary for him to go out for walks, after he has spent his life savings on procuring the privacy of this permanent address. There are some graves that make nothingness visible, like those out in the desert, far from trees and water. There is no companionship for the sleeper there, who burns in the summer heat and freezes in the winter cold, as if he continues to die forever, where death has no metaphor in sleep. But those who oversee the construction of their graves, furnishing them with their photographs, do not think about the comfort to be had from sleeping in friendly proximity to the living, but only of training history to read. They think also of something more complex, of bribing eternity, failing to understand that eternity does not visit graves and loves to joke.

He cares about nothing. If they cut off the water

to his house he says: ‘Never mind! Winter

is close.’ And if they stop the electricity for an hour

he yawns: ‘Never mind, the sun is enough’

If they threaten to lower his pay he says

‘Never mind! I’ll give up alcohol

and tobacco for a month.’ And if they take him to prison

he says: ‘Never mind, I’ll be alone with myself for a while

in the company of memories’

And if they return him to his house he says:

‘Never mind! This is my home’

I said to him once, angrily: ‘How will you live tomorrow?’

He said: ‘Tomorrow does not concern me. It’s an idea

that does not seduce me. I am what I am: nothing

will change me, just as I will change

nothing, so don’t keep the sun off me!’

I said to him: ‘I am not Alexander the Great

and I am not Diogenes’

And he said: ‘But indifference is a philosophy

It’s one aspect of hope.’

If a picture frame gets broken, as the result of a minor earth tremor, you take the picture to a good picture framer and he makes it a frame that may be better than the original. But if a picture is ugly, as the result of some basic artistic flaw, and its frame remains intact, you will not need it unless you are short of wood for the stove. It is the same thing with an idea: if its frame is broken, you find a stronger, more solid one for it. But if the idea is broken, its sound frame will be no more than a sad memory you preserve like a frustrated shepherd who keeps the bell from one of his rams after it has been killed by wolves.

The white air thickens, slows down and spreads like combed cotton in space. When it comes into contact with the body of night it lights it up on all sides. Snow. The electricity is cut off and I rely on the light from the snow to find my way to the path, the musical interlude between two walls, and to the room next to the six palm trees that stand like nuns on the valley shoulder. An almost metaphysical joy enters me from everything external, and I thank the wind that has brought the snow from regions accessible only in spirit. If I were different I would try hard to describe the snow. But as I have been snatched away into these white cosmic pastures, I break free from myself and am neither me nor someone else, for both of us are guests on the carpet of glittering white jewels, which are visible and wide open to interpretation. When the electricity is restored, I switch off the light and remain standing at the window and see myself over there – an apparition beyond the snow.

He said to me, after he had broken the glass:

‘Don’t say that poetry, my friend, is beautiful

or powerful

for there is no powerful or beautiful poetry

There is poetry that strikes you, secretly

with the diseases of writing and schizophrenia, and you rave

and your self leaves you for another, and you say:

“I am this one or that one and I am not me.” You spend time

examining words. And when you find

a pulse for them, they stretch up and whisper in your ear:

“Come close and go away, be a stranger and be one with us.” Milk

flows from the night. You feel you are a child

who will soon be born.’

Modest and reserved, sweetly perfumed, like a bed of lavender, you sit confronting my gaze. My fingers knock together, and my cup of coffee falls – my excuse, my trick to make you bring your perfume closer to me so that I can gather it up along with the slivers of cardamom – but it doesn’t reach me. Because the scent of lavender does not leave the safety of its bedchamber for someone waiting to enjoy its hidden bounty. With growing impatience I lean forward to catch a hint of fragrance from you, as you chastely try to preserve its virginity, swathed in its thick leaves. I move nearer to you, risking all, casting my fear aside. I stretch out my hands to the bed of lavender, rubbing it, holding it close, smelling it, squeezing it, and you say nothing. As if you really are lavender, whose perfume can be held in the hand.

Even if you were not the dazzling presence you are, I would be the absence in you that I am – inside and out. Your presence is translucent, crystalline, I see gardens beyond it and am swept away to high wildernesses, inaccessible even to an imagination that is delighted by the range of metaphor and hindered by the poverty of everyday language. I say what I say to you in language that needs the density of honey and the lightness of a butterfly, in the presence of this power that is capable of raising mere chance to the level of something unique and wonderful. For where does your silence take us, as it bestows upon obscure language the seductiveness of word-play? As if I have not written before, and learnt by heart what I wrote to you. Your presence is translucent, and I do not know if your soul inhabited your body, or your body was clothed in your soul and shone like a pearl in my darkness. Form and substance are confused in my mind, and I see form as substance, and substance as the perfect form. I compete with you to be silent, so that I don’t say something which plunges me back into the sort of clumsy improvisation I used before you. No, I’m not a poet waiting to get his poem from the signals you give out. You and I – if we may be united in a single phrase, just as we are together here in one room – are light and airy guests on archetypal clouds, longing to fly to the trees of night, with no thought of a tomorrow that fails to prepare us to live without hope. So I am present and you are absent. I watch as your absence accumulates over my head
like a heavy sky. Even if you were not the absence you are, I would be the presence I am. As if you are with me. As if I am in the utmost need of the least thing.

I am jealous of my senses. The air is the colour of gardenias, your smell on my shoulders like laughter and triumphal arches. I am jealous of the peaceful daggers lying sheathed before you on the table, waiting for a sign from you to kill me. I am jealous of the vase, which has no need of its yellow roses because you give it the full benefit of your deep red lips, hungry for my hunger. I am jealous of the painting staring greedily at you: look longer at me, so I too can have my fill of lakes and cherry orchards. I am envious of the foliage on the rug, straining upwards to see an anklet descending on it from above, and of the anklet when it rests on your knee, making the marble in the room as hot as my fantasies. I am envious of the bookshop that is out of sorts because it doesn’t carry an erotic book in praise of two small ivory hills, bared before it to a frenzy of guitars, then hidden by a wave of sighing silk. I am envious of my fingers catching the dialogue of darkness and light as it overflows from your hands, the movement of a spoon in your teacup, the salts stirred up in a body that yearns for a storm to spark the fire of song: gather me up, all of you, and hold me close so I can envy my memories of you in the future. I envy my tongue, which calls your name with as much care as someone carrying four crystal glasses in one hand. I taste the letters of your name one by one, like lyrical fruits. I do not add water to them, so as to preserve the taste of peaches and the thirst of my senses. I envy my imagination embracing you, silencing you, kissing you, caressing you, holding you
tight and letting you go, bringing you near and pushing you away, lifting you up and putting you down, making you submit and submitting to you, and doing all the things I never do.

Is all this you?

Mysterious and lucid

present and absent at once

Your eyes are a pitch black night that lights my way

Your hands are cold and trembling

but they ignite a fire in my body

Your voice is a liquid melody that dissolves me in a glass

You are solid and transparent, rebellious and tame

a virgin, mother of two girls:

my poem

and a poem whose writer was destroyed by lack of imagination!

Is all this you?

Summer in winter, and in autumn the spring of yourself

You grow old and young to the notes of your magic flute

The air grows fresh with new life where you pass

The distant water laughs when you look at the clouds

and the sad stones rejoice when you go by in high heels

Is this, all this, you?

Lose one or two of your stars so I can believe

you are a woman of flesh and blood

and not music crushing me like a hazelnut underfoot

Be a little diminished, and break free from your metaphor

so that I can hold every part of you

except the part I have released into the air.

I locked the door and put the key in my pocket. I closed the windows and drew the curtains. I wiped the dust off the mirror, the table and my spectacles, picked the faded flowers off the plant, selected Chopin’s
Nocturnes
and unplugged the phone so I wouldn’t be disturbed by my girlfriend asking what I was doing tonight. How could I tell her I had a private meeting with myself? I had the feeling that the night, like the world, was no longer a safe place to be as I waited calmly for my appointment. I poured red wine into two glasses and thought vaguely about what to say to my visitor – myself. I anticipated his particular way of exposing me and pulling off my masks, and his sarcastic question: ‘How long is it since we’ve met?’ I would say: ‘Not since you had your fill of me and I of you, and you took refuge in my image of you and I in yours of me.’ Then he would ask me: ‘So why didn’t you forget to forget me?’ I would say: ‘So I don’t miss an opportunity to ignore you.’ He would say to me: ‘I don’t understand you.’ I would say: ‘Nor do I. The world is no longer a safe place. I need you to save me. Why were you late for our meeting?’ He would ask: ‘What meeting?’ I would say: ‘This one. Have you forgotten?’ But there is no answer and I stare at his glass and it’s not there. I drank my wine and felt drunk and said: ‘I’m all alone.’ I plugged in the phone again and called my girlfriend. ‘Come and see me,’ I pleaded. She said: ‘I can’t leave the house, I’ve got a private meeting with myself.’

‘Night is a history of longing, and you are my night’