A Vision

 

This Iraq will reach the ends of the graveyard.
It will bury its sons in open country
generation after generation,
and it will forgive its despot . . . .
It will not be the Iraq that once held the name.
And the larks will not sing.
So walk — if you wish — a long time.
And call — if you wish —
on all the world's angels
and all its demons.
Call on the bulls of Assyria .
Call on a westward phoenix . . . .
Call them
and through the haze of phantoms
watch for miracles to emerge
from clouds of incense.

Amman , 8/13/1997

© Saadi Youssef (Irak)

Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Without an Alphabet, Without a Face;
 Selected Poems,Graywolf Press

 

Saadi Youssef was born in 1934 in Basra , Iraq . He has published thirty volumes of poetry, seven books of prose, and has rendered into Arabic major works by such writers as Walt Whitman, Constantine Cavafis, Federico García Lorca, George Orwell, Nuruddin Farah, and Wole Soyinka. He left Iraq in 1979, and after many detours, working as a journalist, publisher, and political activist, he has settled in London .