1.

 

Writing is pain.

 

And the blood that sprinkles on the screen stains the scene and leaves on the couch what resembles spots of dried coffee which we touch with trembling fingers so that the infection will not come near us.

 

We recline with broken backs as if going to hell with eyes blurred a dark red.. yet it is brown as well and leaves in the soul what resembles rust.

 

We wipe the aged heads and escape pronouncing it, then lick at the salt flowing from our eyes.

 

Those who crawl from street to screen leave green traces on the asphalt that grow quickly into hedges of basil, they throw us with a flower and die quickly so that we will not be ashamed of ourselves.

 

Take off your shoes now and walk on broken glass, for you are in the sacred valley.

 

2.

 

"The comrades in reading are asleep.

You wander alone among the library shelves

without any signs indicating exit.

A groaning comes from the right, from the third shelf

an entire section expelled from the novel

and laughter a tragic title

for a book on philosophy.

Politics flows like mucus from one shelf to another

There is no time for epic

for the Book of Delight and Intimacy

where Machado pulls back the cardboard wrapping

so that the plates will not fall

…

We are like the proof-sheets of books

full of paragraphs awaiting revision.

 

3.

 

I sit on the balcony of the house. Aleppo is before me deserted and black. The clicking of plates in the darkness indicates that life occurs on a table. No sound except intermittent gunfire from somewhere and one shell preceded by a strange whistle… Someone is leaving this planet with a dry throat. Aleppo is before me black and silent. These enormous shadows may belong to trees, or to distant childhood stories, or may be black vapors expelled by women now waiting for their children to become numbers in a news report.

 

Aleppo. No plucking of an oud. No figure dances. No cup in the Nightingale. No drunkards. No song.

..

..

..

 

One by one

they awaken

beasts of the darkness.

 

4.

 

 

I am Marina Constantine

widow of the priest George Shihwaro

Marcel's companion on the road - late at night - to our home;

endowed with secrets of the holy church

and with the cherries at the bottom of the cup of ambergris,

busy with laughter at the age of fifty,

with braids of my hair lost in drawers.

..

I am Marina

returning from the Carlton

where life clings to the music

and hardens like the gum tree

 

At my leisure

I sprinkle salt

though I know that the meal will not spoil

and I plunge a finger into the wine so the heart will rejoice.

..

..

I am Marina

who smelled at the wrong turn

the scent of fear diffusing from sweaty fists

and piercing the air like leaden metal

before the citadel vanished in the magician's hat

..

..

 

I am Marina

who did not know she had died

until she listened with the thousands wearing white and waving flowers

to the voice of the priest in the church of Prophet Ilyas: