THE LEGEND OF AL-SAYYAB AND THE SILT

From the start, Al-Sayyab knew
that the things we love
     are few: a face
shining under the rags
      in its tiny cradle
luminous like a loaf of bread.
Several women, kind
     like the nursemaids of legend
and a handful of silt
moist like a chronicle of the flood -
These kept pursuing him
     out of the apertures
          of his memory,
the windows he saw in childhood
     opening for his gaze.

For these, he sang
     even as he burned
          and waited on hospital beds
away from the water of Iraq.
               For these.
He begged even the mud at the
                    bottom of a stream.
And sang.

Al-Sayyab knew from the start:
a barefoot will lead only
to jail or massacre, and poverty
                    is the only devil
as long as the world in its splendour
or misery, is a banquet thrown
               for the others
          in our name . . .
And whenever he wrote the poem,
the hospital plunged like a raft
     down into the void.
Then, as night, that solicitous
servant brought him
the halo of eternity, and death like a faceless
dancer in the earth's last tavern
disrobed for his eyes -
          Jaikur1 turned
with all its orchards
     and all its mud
          in the river of his blood
and he saw the Lord
at the bottom of Buwaib2.

By Sargon Boulus
_________

1 Jaikur is the town where Al-Sayyab was born
2 Buwaib is the river that runs through Jaikur