This evening reminds me of the beginning, when I was closer to the windows’ iron bars than the sun, and when I was watching: how the windows’ iron grows to a plant in the evening.

I was entering the presents, which didn’t notice — a golden ribbon on an empty box\ which is life\ and what it was supposed to be.

In that tour of Al Rasheed street¹, he stopped before the glass of the shop; he knew it well: ever since it was something forming in the ranged dust of the street\ (the days held the color of permanence … ) … he was growing more barren each year, and becoming new in the opposite yard, where the river shines with its voice’s lights.

The shop is now closed\ and the street is rolling in a motion that extends to the beginning of Abu Nuas², to establish — from there — the voice of childhood in a remote encounter.

¹ An old central street in Baghdad. Al Rasheed is the name of the famous Abbasid caliph. The word literally means the wise man.

² A street or avenue that runs along the Tigris River in Baghdad. Abu Nuas is a famous Arabian poet who lived in the Abbasid era. He is famous for his poetry praising wine and joy in life; the street was well known for bars and gardens.

A postponed evening, bewildered in dust and wood, and the windows that reached the evening; the night is moonlit, and the sidewalk became empty except for a dull light.

This strange numbness\ the huge silence that wraps up the city\ a close tree became a cloudy shadow, and names of barrooms flowed in the river.

Al Safraa¹ left its lights, to come back again\ and dry in the silence.

¹ An old bar in Abu Nuas Street. It doesn’t exist anymore.

The lake is in the depths; it was not the lake we were seeing …

A distant air tanned with salt pulls the smells off the girls’ faces; a floating hut whitens in the sun …

We were young, and the land was under the water of wars\ and we were gathering the colors from a light that was forming everything — from the dust of the sky.

That day he was dreaming; how deep was he rooted in the void? … Erasing to form himself; verifying the river’s wisdom before resting in the sun’s wood … camps are panting … the dogs, abandoned to the noon, are sleeping beneath the enduring … and hesitation’s steps cease between the camp and the creek that meets it\ at a corner, where the soldiers’ river extends and reverses itself.

Among campfires… cities were sunk in the river’s darkness; the near facades were bright in the light; and near a seat in the cinema\ night alone erodes the seats and skin.

Strange wind coming from afar anticipates the country’s attitude\ so inverts its days …

He was young those days, when this idea came for the first time into his mind; why do we work to establish all that wakes at the cry of nothingness? …

Death occupied him, and the years were taking form between a street of (Al Rasheed) and a facing yard from (Abu Nuas); the organizations are suspended, the bars have the smell of a secret informer, and the gardens accumulate in the depths.

Those days he was wandering\ drawing a long line extending among the gardens\ offering to death the essence of the place.

That light was strange, and you were approaching the day’s jars; you were dreaming of being a street in the sun’s deafness, to recite your dusty text to the dust …

how rude you were, when you were asking the last carelessness of summer for a street of significance … ? …

In spite of the alluvium in Tigris, in spite of the fire of the place and the nodding boats; the body is circling the noon, on the bridges near the estuary of love …

As if we care less about date-palms\ about dusk putting on its kaftan in a yard, which might be a command to emerge — without our knowing — , and the ancient air on Tigris water might be something … from the ancient airshadows in the caves of beauty.

We are not dreaming much any more; … was love widowed, or is it the evening?! …

(the age’s felicity) … the wind … when you were young …

The bar is just a back garden, and the river in the date-palms like the palms in the river; a silent watch, or a clay dove\ and near the hummock in the corner, a shadow extends to the evening’s river that folds\ or wakes at a street in the dream’s avenue.

They were many, and we were alone. And we walk today:

A date-palm in the skin, an age that disappeared; its hand remained, scattered among a washtub\ a corner\ a distant light\ a window’s brace\ and a door.

This body, I knew it since … the face; I knew the road that leads to its hands, and the fire of nights/ether on the secret of its face.

Today I bear it, or guide it, and it follows me; while we exchange some silence\ about his (cistern), and about those long roads that had not met him.

* Joseph … ?

You stop one day, to find out that you are not what you thought\ and what’s even more important: you are nobody.

Clouds’ color shifts, and the rain that meets it, and the glass that embraces the rain.

Then, you will be but a point, moving upon the days; and in spite of fear and pain, in spite of rooting down and echoing, it will send its fire arrow far — into a forest —\ where it will meet nothing but the density.

Their days dissolve, like the faces\ their feet dissolve\ … you know them, and know that they were the beginning.

You know the fire where you met them, and the altar that remained empty, after the superintendents left; when you were a child, and in a street met the life that puts on the river’s uniform.

* offering …?

Those you knew, why are they alarmed? Why do they prepare to travel to the land of their pain, but don’t leave?

How empty the land was; you — to be you\ they — to be them\ and the years to “send the thread” of their light — through the holes of disaffection — , to weave a family.

* death …

Away from their sun, the years slept rough.

He was staring at the wall, in a space looking down upon a porthole, through which, the voices of their days reached from afar\ while a spider was weaving the sound of its dim webs\ white interrupted yarns\ which are days tangled with darkness like the tangle of healing with the night.

* strife …