Khaled Mattawa

Song

Bells on our eyelashes
and the death throes of words,
and I among fields of speech,
a knight on a horse made of dirt.
My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book.
and I, under the skin of words,
on the beaming banks of foam,
a poet who sang and dies
leaving this
before the faces of poets,
for birds at the edge of sky

Rag

I walk – nothing to hold on to but hands
that I barely see.
The leaves of time fly about as I ask,
why can I never finish reading them?

At the doorstep of the café, at the beginning of the street, poetry came
and went in the shape of a seer
on a day that was like a rag wet with muddy water.

Wakefulness

In the village, I always wake before the sun so that I can take a better look at the first steps that the morning draws on the stairway of space. Also to better see the wakefulness of the other shapes on the theater that surrounds me. They are shapes that change according to the changes of light and shadow. For each tree, for each plant, for each stone there is a wardrobe full of clothes to wear and take off. This all depends on the place – a tailor with beautiful hands, a magical face, one cheek in the shade and one in light.

It is a moment that makes me feel that the movement of things is what writes the world with an ink that is nothing less than the blood of time.

As wakefulness continues, and seeing continues, a feeling fills me that on this stage appearance is the eternal presence, and that meaning is the eternal victor.

Secrets

Death holds us in its embrace,
reckless and modest,
carries us, a secret with his secrets
and turns our multitudes into one.

Face

The other face/fatique. When I say fatigue, I mean, daily life. Fatigue is a woman and a man. Fatigue is a chair or a café. Fatigue is shadow and darkness. It is also the moon the and sun.

These days, these days of fatigue, have their own books, each step a word. And the words do not end.

The other face/a mixture bonding, breaking apart, bonding in a circular motion that never ceases. And each face is lonely even when it embraces another.

The other face/the immediate presence rises to the level of poetry and dream. You want to embrace this reality, to inhabit it, because the fabric is the same, the space is the same, but each step has its own rhythm and its own horizon. The other face/ the debate between estrangement and union, presence and absence. And so when you walk the Hamidiya souk it’s as if you see things and you do not see them, as if you are seeking what you do not see in what you see.

A woman and a man

- Who are you?

– A mad mystic without a home
              a stone fallen from sky, demon-bred

– Who are you?
              Did you travel in my body?    

– Many times

– What did you see?

– I saw my death

– Did you wear my face?
              and saw my sun as shadow
              and saw my shadow as a sun
              and slid under my bed and revealed me?

– Did you reveal me?

– And now that we reflected each other, have you found certainty?

– No

– Were you healed by me, and remained afraid?

– No

– Do you know me now?

– Do you know me?

– Ông là ai?

– Một nhà thần bí điên, vô trú xứ
                      một hòn đá rơi từ trời, giống quỷ

– Ông là ai?
            Ông đã du hành trong thân thể em?

– Nhiều lần

– Ông thấy gì?

– Tôi thấy cái chết của mình.

– Ông có mang khuôn mặt của em?
                  và nhìn thấy mặt trời em như cái bóng
                  và nhìn thấy cái bóng em như mặt trời
                  và luồn dưới giường em và khám phá em

– Em có khám phá ra tôi?

– Và bây giờ khi chúng ta đã soi rọi lẫn nhau, ông có tìm thấy điều chắc chắn?

– Không.

– Ông đã được em chữa lành, nhưng vẫn sợ?

– Không.

– Bây giờ ông có hiểu em không?

– Vậy em có hiểu tôi không?

Music

Nothing, nothing—a light wind plays the trees’ guitars.
Nothing, nothing.
Emptiness. No way for words to fill it.

And I dream, dream
and the dream is nothing but reality in its infancy.
So ask yourself then, don’t ask me—
there is no blockade against the horizon except in your mind.
But, it is almost certain
that a poem rises magically like a house dangling from the sky.

In this house an immigrant lives and his name is meaning.