Very Happy Telegrams

 Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen

For Sahib Ash-Shahir*

*******************

 Poet,

After twenty years of death

How has become the color of your spring smile?

How has become the appearance of the child

In your childish soul?

To my Double-Tongued friends

**************************

Dear friends,

Thank you because, by your bitter hatred,

You led me to the river of sweet love

Till I reached its important bottom

Where I brought out the pearls of its speech

Pearl by pearl.

To my Griefs:

 *******************

Thank you because you have not fired

The coup de grace at me up to now.

To Rain

*******

Thank you because you fall down in Tigris's lap

As the beggars' screams fall upon the old bridge

As the seagulls fall upon the rusty boats

As  mercy falls on the Earth.

When they search for an embracing heart

And do not find

They will go back to where they come from.

 To winter:

*******************

Thank you small prophet.

Thank you for your clouds reaching at last

By registered mail.

Thank you for your clouds coming

With childhood stamps pasted on.

Once I removed the stamps I began to drown

And my heart began to burn

In the moans of letters,

In the screams of words

And the flood of dots. 

To the World Stamps:

*******************

Thank you ….

If the whole of you have gathered

Together with your birds, crowns and suns

You will not bring back to me

One single dream of my childhood dreams

Which the postman had stolen.

To Time:

*******************

Thank you my big brother.

Thank you handsome hangman.

Thank you because you have not arrested me  

On a charge of begging the meaning

From the double – tongued countries

And the masses of dissidents.  

 

To Beauty:

*******************

Thank you because you have discovered

The blueness in my soul

Whereas I have discovered the lines in your hands.

You have discovered the spring in my words

Whereas I have discovered the meaning in your lips.

You have discovered the music in my letters

Whereas I have discovered my soul sliding

Into your soul to the extent of delirium.  

To the Dot:

*******************

Thank you for your  great patience with me

Until the loss of my final letters gets in a false pub

Or in a street selling the not-for-sale

Or in a very old city

Or a history upon which the dogs made water

And the spears of barbarians ate its good fish.

*******************************

Sahib Ash-Shahir*: an Iraqi poet who died in the Iraq- Iran war when he was only 27 years old

 TM

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