Boredom

Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen

1

I got bored with looking at the bears

Eating greedily the giving

Of their great bear,

And with the monkeys

Climbing the trees

Every day

To throw fruit

And fill the air with screaming and yelling.

I got bored with the dogs

Sniffing the corpses,

With the parrots crushing the words,

And with the dove deserting us

Every day

To die in the midst of  the letter boat

Searching for Noah and his great flood.

 2

I got bored with waiting and non-waiting,

With advantage and disadvantage,

With friendship and enmity,

With the charity bread

And the bread soaked in blood,

With the scent of meaning

And the scent of meaninglessness,

With heaven that never comes

And with hell that stripteases every day

To uncover its violent attractiveness

In the circus of great torture.

3

I got bored with crying and silence,

With tears and with petrified tears,

With those who crossed the isthmus

And sold our clothes.

With those who surrounded us

And  stole our letters

In great pleasure.

4

I got bored with mail

And the post box,

With the faithless friends,

And the rough friends,

And the thieving friends

With the letter at its blazing

But finds nobody to see its light.

And the letter dying

But finds nobody to recite upon it

The first sura of the Holy Koran.

5

I got bored with war and peace,

With hunting and hiding,

With poverty and the ghost of poverty,

With hunger and the bear of hunger,

With embers put on the tongue,

With the salt put in the base of the wall,

With female slaves’ legs and effeminate men,

With harlots’ lips,

Spinsters’ breasts

And beggars’ palms.

With time that turns into sand,

Straw and ash.

I got bored with you;

Whoever you are

Wherever you are

I got bored with myself;

I am the great bored one.

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