"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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