-I-
Six thousand years old.
The damned labyrinthine thing
is six thousand years old.
She was conquered
a thousand times,
I
am told,
And was liberated
a
thousand more.
And still she stands.
And still she holds.
Still
she holds.
And men,
some of whom
were, indeed,
great,
actually died for her,
or while fighting against her.
And women,
though mostly
in historical
silence,
wholeheartedly grieved for her,
and because of her.
And often were the times
when she
was bought
and sold.
Sold,
in open daylight,
as
some menial old thing
on some old and dusty rack,
with little intrinsic worth,
or
none at all.
Or none at all.
And still she stands.
And still she holds.
Still she holds.
One would expect her
to be rather tired
of
life by now.
Rather
cynical.
Rather bitter.
Rather cautious.
But she tends
to take herself
rather seriously still,
I gather,
a bit too seriously,
I am afraid,
for the times at hand.
-II-
I cannot touch...
your history-stuffed
walls.
I cannot breathe...
your history-laden
air.
I cannot drink...
your history-flavored
waters.
I cannot hug...
your history-rich soil.
There is something
about them all
that repels me,
o, Damascus.
It repels me.
-III-
Don’t grow tired of me yet, mother.
Don’t grow tired of me.
Don’t grow bored.
Don’t grow bored.
Don’t unsheathe yet
that damned sword
of adulthood
and cut off
that umbilical cord
that still binds to each other,
mother.
Mother.
Don’t grow sore of me yet, mother.
Don’t grow sore.
Don’t grow sore.
I still cannot let go of
you, mother,
I still cannot ignore
my need
for more
of your cradling,
more of your sheltering,
and more of that intrinsic essence
that makes you a mother, mother.
And makes me
just another nasty little
client,
still in need of his…whore.
His whore, mother.
His whore.
-IV-
Ah the noise.
Ah the noise.
This damnable pervasive noise
in the background.
Dawn or dusk,
it does not matter.
This maddening noise never falters
to be present,
always present,
pervasively present,
in the background.
The noise of traffic.
The noise of asynchronous music.
The noise of loud TVs.
And hushed whispers
from hundreds
of crowded balconies.
The noise of thousands of feet
shuffling along
some miserable street.
The noise of children
crying...playing.
The noise of love-making
shameless, deafening,
defying.
The noise of the huffing, puffing
and yelling
as some retch
roughs and beats
his daunted wife.
The noise of prayers ascending
to an
ever-unreachable heaven.
The noise of birds flying.
The noise of a cricket
in some unkempt backyard
garden
still,
miraculously,
and lucky
me,
managing to be heard.
The noise of stray cats meowing,
meowing,
meowing.
The noise of some poor devil
sweeping the
streets,
and, heaven knows,
the entire country needs
sweeping.
The noise of someone calling,
and
calling,
and calling.
The noise of crime and sin.
The noise of innocence.
The noise of the wailing
of the collective
conscience
of an entire nation,
crying up to
heaven,
an equally stinking
unforgiving
heaven,
signifying
the
total irrelevance of all that is divine.
All that is,
supposedly,
divine.
The noise of someone walking away.
Somehow,
during my prolonged absence,
my people have
managed
to kill silence.
The noise of deep breathing,
and something coarse,
something rattling...
May 1995