Hassan Ammar (AFP), Beirut, 19 October, 2019. Source: off-guardian.org
after & for Ghassan Hage
The day is forecast as catastrophic. Heat
strangles the sky. It bulges, a rotten purple.
Earlier, an old Greek and a friend unexpected
slipped into my sleeping throat to see
why I bulged, rotting within: a history
believed in, threatens to become faith
in a future―didn’t anyone tell you
never to eat a seed? Oh it grows, it grows.
You must lose this weight to be at ease.
Adonis/Dennis Bouchard. From “A”, an exhibition retracing twenty years of visual works by the poet Adonis, Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, Paris, 2015. Source: worldliteraturetoday.org
who are you and who am I
he stayed me
and he said to me Who are you and who am I and I saw the sun and the moon and the stars and all the lights ashine and he said to me There is no light in my sea shines on without I have seen it and each thing came to me until no thing was left and kissed me between my eyes and saluted me and stood in shadow and he said to me You know me and I do not know you and I saw all of him clung to my robe and not to me and my robe leant and I did not and my robe leant and he said to me Who am I and the sun went down and the moon and the stars fell and the lights were put out and the dark covered all things but him and my eye did not see and my ear did not hear my senses ceased and each thing spoke it said Allahu Akbar and each thing came to me a spear in its hand it said to me Flee and I said Where to and it said Fall into darkness and into darkness I fell and I saw myself and he said to me See none but yourself ever Come out from darkness never And should I bring you out from it I would show you myself You would see me and should you see me you would be most distant of all
night
he stayed me
Saul Leiter, Barbara, 1951. Source: designobserver.com
.
The long fact of the turned face is named faith.
Through the tall windows opposing the tapestries
that depict the gaze of the lion, low hills with dark cows
remain far. A pheasant plump in the dirt, a voice saying you,
and modern angles guide us into the room where we were
never again, as in the absence of any machine a man
watches the ball propelled down the lane toward him
then bends, pins in hand. I hear his regular breath.
.
Caravaggio’s “The Taking of Christ”. Source: newyorker.com
He is arrogant.
Like a Jerusalem oak—growing in the most narrow fissure, the most meager soil—that was his arrogance, at first. There was almost nothing to feed it. It was thin and pale and stood apart from the vast landscape of him—a few dry green leaves that were, at most, a distraction, a distraction from that great and beautiful emptiness. Because that’s what was most remarkable about him—that emptiness—vast and open and almost unimaginable.
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