Language by amani amr

Verse
1
Friends
The old word is dead.
The old books are dead.
Our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead.
Dead is the mind that led to defeat.
2
Our poetry has gone sour.
Women's hair, nights, curtains and sofas
Have gone sour.
Everything has gone sour.
3
My grieved country,
In a flash
You changed me from a poet who wrote love poems
To a poet who writes with a knife
4
What we feel is beyond words:
We should be ashamed of our poems.
5
Stirred by Oriental bombast,
By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly,
By the fiddle and the drum,
We went to war,
And lost.
6
Our shouting is louder than out actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our tragedy.
7
In short
We wear the cape of civilisation
But our souls live in the stone age
8
You dont win a war
With a reed and a flute.
9
Our impatience
Cost us fifty thousand new tents.
10
Dont curse heaven
If it abandons you,
Dont curse circumstances,
God gives victory to whom He wishes
God is not a blacksmith to beat swords.
11

A Lesson In Drawing

My son places his paint box in front of me
and asks me to draw a bird for him.
Into the color gray I dip the brush
and draw a square with locks and bars.
Astonishment fills his eyes:
"... But this is a prision, Father,
Don't you know, how to draw a bird?"
And I tell him: "Son, forgive me.
I've forgotten the shapes of birds."
***
My son puts the drawing book in front of me
and asks me to draw a wheatstalk.
I hold the pen
and draw a gun.

Language

When a man is in love
how can he use old words?
Should a woman
desiring her lover
lie down with
grammarians and linguists?
 
I said nothing
to the woman I loved
but gathered
love's adjectives into a suitcase
and fled from all languages.

***********

My Lover Asks Me

My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"