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YAHIA AL-SAMAWY
The Last Poem
- I want for myself:
- twenty hands,
- A sheet of paper large as a tropical
forest,
- A pen big as a palm-tree,
- A well of black ink,
- to write my last poem
- Pouring in it my anxiety,
- the paleness of children who exchange
their school bags for beggars’ tools, their toys for
- shoe-shine boxes
- My last poem long as the night of Iraq
- Where I place the agonies of my homeland
- itched on a guillotine’s edge,
- And the wailing of widows and bereaved
mothers.
- And read it from a pulpit atop a mountain
- Or from the electric chair waiting for my
head’s arrival
- -Before I begin death’s slumber
without nightmares-
- bandages cannot smother my fires
- rivers and rains can neither quench
my thirst
- Nor drench my arid life
- Hand me the instruments of writing
- I don’t practice my freedom except
on papers
- Let me die on my papers
- Let a poem be my tomb
- I will have no tomb in my homeland
- Give me the tools of writing to dig up my
grave
- If not I shall begin my last sleep
- But do not close my eyes
- I want them to stay wide open like the
door of our huts
- Like the hands of beggars
- Let them stay open
- To see what is darker: my grave or Iraq?
- For twenty years I searched in my home
for my homeland
- Oh, If only I could gather the fragments
of my corpse
- my frequent moves between internment
camps
- and underground chambers of torture
- Scattered my memory throughout Iraq
- For twenty years lovers in my homeland
exchanged their letters in their dreams
- And met each other only in funeral
processions.
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- [translated by Salih J. Altoma,
Professor Emeritus of Arabic
- and Comparative Literature at Indiana
University, US]
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