Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? Read Online Free PDF Page A

train went swiftly by
    Past me, and I
    Am still waiting.

III.
Chaos at the Entrance
of Judgment Day

The Well
    I choose a cloudy day to go past the old well.
    Perhaps it is full of sky. Perhaps it has gone beyond meaning
    and beyond the shepherd’s sayings. I shall drink of its water with cupped hands
    and say to the dead around it: Greetings, ye who remain
    around the well in the water of the butterfly! I shall pick up the inula
    from a stone: Greetings, O little stone! Perhaps we were
    the wings of a bird that causes us pain. Greetings,
    O moon that hovers around its image; which it will
    never meet! And I shall say to the cypress: Beware of what
    the dust is telling you. Perhaps we were here two strings of a violin
    at the banquet of the guardians of lapis lazuli. Perhaps we were
    the arms of a lover…
    I had been walking side by side with myself: Be strong,
    Comrade, raise up the past like the horns of a goat
    with your hands, and sit down near your well. Perhaps the harts
    of the watercourse will notice you… The voice cries out –
    Your voice is a voice of stone for the broken present…
    I have not yet completed my brief visit to oblivion…
    I did not take with me all the tools of my heart:
    My bell in the pine tree’s breeze
    My stairway near the sky
    My stars around the roofs
    My hoarseness from the bite of old salt…
    And I said to memory: Greetings, O spontaneous words of grandmother,

    It takes us back to our white days beneath her drowsiness…
    And my name rings like an old pound coin of gold at
    The gate of the well. I hear the desolation of forefathers
    Between the distant meem and waw, like an uncultivated watercourse
    And I hide my friendly tiredness. I know that I
    Shall come back alive, after a few hours, from the well into which
    I have not thrown Joseph or his brothers’ fear
    Of echoes. Beware! Your mother put you here,
    Near the gate of the well: and went off to a talisman… .
    So do with yourself what you want. I did by myself what
    I want. I grew up by night in the tale between the sides
    Of the triangle: Egypt, Syria, and Babylon. Here,
    By myself I grew up without the goddesses of agriculture. (They were
    Washing the pebbles in the olive grove. They were wet
    With dew)… and I saw that I had fallen
    On me from the departure of the caravans near a snake.
    I found none to complete but my ghost. The earth
    Threw me out of its earth, and my name rings on my steps,
    Like a horseshoe; Draw near… so that I may come back from this
    Emptiness to you O eternal Gilgamesh in your name!…
    Be my brother! And go with me to shout into the old well…
    Perhaps it is filled, like a woman, with the sky,
    And perhaps it has over meaning and what
    Is going to happen as my birth from my first well is awaited!
    We shall drink of its water with cupped hands,
    We shall say to the dead around it, Greetings,
    Ye who live in the water of the butterfly,
    O ye dead, greetings!

Like the ‘Nūn; in Surrat ‘al-Rahman’
    In the olive grove, east
    Of the springs, my grandfather has withdrawn into
    His deserted shadow. On his shadow: there has grown no
    Legendary grass, no cloud of lilac has flowed inside the shrine
    *
    The earth is like a robe embroidered
    With a needle of sumac in his broken
    Dreams… grandfather has awoken
    To collect the weeds from his vineyard
    Underground, beneath the black street…
    *
    He taught me the Qur’an under the great basil tree
    East of the well,
    From Adam we came and from Eve
    In the garden of oblivion.
    Grandfather! I am the last of the living
    In the desert, so let us rise!
    *
    The sea and the desert around his name,
    Naked of protectors
    Knew neither my grandfather nor his sons
    Who stand now around the ‘NÅ«n’

    In the Surrat ‘al-Rahman’.
    O God… So bear witness!
    *
    He was one born of himself
    Buried alive, near the fire,
    In himself,
    So let him grant to the phoenix of his burnt
    Secret what it needs after him
    To light the