[Suzanne Alaywan was born in 1974 in Beirut to a Lebanese father and an Iraqi mother. Because of the war, she spent her childhood years and adolescence between Andalusia, Paris, and Cairo. She graduated in 1997 from the department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University of Cairo. She has written thirteen poetry collections. The selection of poems below comes from her latest collection The Gazelle's Throw (2011). Her poetry and paintings are available on her website: www.suzanne-alaywan.com]
(Am) waiting for you
With the utmost despair can afford
with the least measure of my shadow
I trust the rain
like a gardenia flower
a well illuminates me
my life is ink on a cloud
my step behind me
I am my mistakes
night is a pure piece of anxiety
and each bird has the shape of a cross
What is hidden by a breast in its roundness
what keeps the galaxies alive and far
what I am unable to perceive intuitively
and there is no guide
to its springs
what a cup
discovers in the last drop
and the dreamer
with no regret
whereas you misapprehend me and I persist
in my banter
in my frivolity
in the violet's games
the interior, where no consciousness entertains its owner
These are my faces
Watercolor on forest
with downcast eyelashes
without noses
with mouths indifferent to cherries
around them
questions of strangers are hovering
I hang them on their walls
I suggest mirrors
My children don't belong to me
your little ones, too
does a river care about
a seal or a successor?
It is a relationship open as a wound
like the one between an ax and a tree
it rises and shines
with day and the first legend
a breath of air makes you fall
and I gather us clay vessels
with the pleasure of a lumberjack
you cut off my limbs
and proudly commit suicide
imagining that you are my torturer and killer
a fireplace wood
a seat in a café on a sea
a bed in the middle of a room
large and lonely
Without you
pain would not have smelted me into papers
I would not have become
all these friendly be
To a Space
my lungs' butterfly
for two lines of swallows
my halo
everything I have written
without bustle
I leave my images and cages
with remains of your sanguineous wine
I drug sick light
I tame insomnia
But birds
waken me with insistent melodies
On my cheeks
the clown's makeup
the shoeblack in front of me
with his hanging box
a suitcase that does not travel
and the piano who
like crazy
cries and laughs
his half is a waking wing
and his totality is keys
music aches me
Reality
with its hammers succeeding on my bones
I bow until I become my lap
and when I lift my neck a little
To inspect the void and what I missed
I find the crescent I left shaping into
a full gallows
How I cried
So my name grows old
like a messenger rolling loose on a bicycle?
It's a moment
the illusion of the time that passes
Thus departure has destroyed me
what terrified me
is that we were done a thousand times and more
without me forgetting
once
your name
On a Street from Chestnut Trees
I release it
to disperse what a name can dispel
from the desolation of a stroll
to gather the footsteps of my childhood
and follow
the ages and colored stones
I scattered
with my palm
I embrace the handle
I shake hands with the past
I forgive it
As if I did not leave
In the sunny pathway
My siblings are young
they run laughing
My mother is young
nervous
captivating
my books
my dictionaries
and a perfume bottle whose name I forgot
on the old shelf
I name after you
the city's scent after the rain
so that lavish buildings become intoxicated
cars speeding to their rendezvous
kiosks and umbrellas
before closing
On rain itself
diamonds in my hair are melting
studding the asphalt and ladders
streaming like sweat
off statues' nudity
with birds
I release it high
free from its letters
from the throats' ropes
from the tearful connotations
and the shell of titles
from a cage scattered in my chest
as a gift
I opened impatiently
to touch the essence
solid and genuine as a jewel
A Tower
as a metal beacon
in gear
a stream's flicker
a drizzle and Christmas decoration
a house
with doors scattered
and locked
our windows in the stars' direction
a window
rescued
the planet is my head
on your knee
on my somnolence
your eyelashes are mothers
unlike the darkness of the velvet
yarns are embroidered
with the colors of our desires
In our city
in the distant country
all our days are September
and rain and dusk are my words
in an attempt
to describe a lock of your hair
Vainly Trying
to tattoo my sight
with the scene
with an echo street
with two bright sidewalks
with a fence of an enchanted garden
with our trace at dawn
in drowse
and tease
with you beside me
with your coat
with your green shawl
with a wool hat and gloves
with a suitable smile
In vain I try to prolong the moment
as a shadow or a road
the eye of the capital is a spinning top
junctions are fixed
and the taxi
without a black sign
moves away
[Translated from the Arabic by Gaelle Raphael]