"Trophies" By Nazik al-Malaika, translated (1980, California)

                                                   "Trophies"

Pass by, if you wish, visionless wordless
pass by, with deepest of the slow silence within you
and the face of the Sphinx carried by you
dragging the ordeals of a heart of ice
be, if you wish, taseless
be, if you wish, autumn
oh! but...throw a shadow

And let your eyes stretch like a horizon
with no light
and fill the universe with the empty laughter of idiots
and never understand the tears
then close your eyes despite pride
and let them be emptiness
a horizon away from any meaning
oh! but...give a colour

And let your past be dead
and hidden by the years and mud
no passion in your heart
but traces of disgraced feelings
let your love be gone with yesterday
oh! but...save a memory

And let the shadow of tomorrow
be death and darkness
and let us live every wound
while time sucks the bones
and leaves them in ruins
let tomorrow be black fog
oh! but...give a dream

Let the secrets of the humiliated past be revealed
and to all eyes legends are exposed
and what time had concealed
were remnants with no structure
let it be clear as never before
oh! but...keep a secret

Let you be a travelling spirit
in a painful silence
with childhood dreams torn by vengeance
of an old wound
and be gone to damn every star and horizon
and melt the night into cups of poison 
let you be remnants with no trace
not even within yourself
oh! but...redeem a heart

In the horror of the night
we have lost the path of tomorrow
and forgotten the serenity of two hearts
of a near yesterday
listen to the whisper of guilts
in a universal silence
and take, if you wish, the cup
and spill what is left
oh! but...save a drop.


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"Myths" By Nazik al-Malaika, translated (1980, California)

                                      "Myths"

They said life
is the color of dead eyes
is the footsteps of a killer in disguise
and it's wrinkled days
are poisoned garment that shouts of death
and our dreams
are the smiles in ailing eyes
that await their end

They said hope
is the pout of thirsting lips
that taste water in the cup
in a painting on the wall
is the sad wing of the single bird
who circles his fallen nest, and waits
for morning and miracle
that will turn the pieces into home

They said silence
is the stupid myth brought by nobody
that listens with both ears and then
leaves his soul hidden beneath the ashes
the screams of fences that he heard not
and pieces of torn paper, dust
chairs of ancient rooms, and glass
covered with webs of an aging spider
and a coat hung on the wall

They said youth,
but when I asked they spoke of years
that when they come fog escapes
and they spoke of a heaven
behind a mirage
and of an oasis
that when I reached I found the dreams of tomorrow
crucified at the slammed door
of the oasis

They said eternity,
I found it a shadow lying chill
over the cemeteries where life contracts
I found it a word on singing lips
damning their past
singing and dying frivolously 
thay said eternity, I found nothing but death

They said and said
thoughts the winds took up
where death tracks the dull words
the tired who never rest
the lost who nowhere will ever get
that said and I said and nothing to say
such a myth is imagination's irony

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