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

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    Over ‘the album’ of this tour guide
    *
    I enter by way of her stone armpit, as
    A wave enters eternity, I cross
    The centuries as if crossing from room to room
    I see in myself the familiar contents of time:
    A Canaanite girl’s looking glass,
    Combs of ivory,
    An Assyrian soup bowl,
    The sword of the man who guarded his Persian master’s sleep,

    The sudden leap of falcons from one flag to another
    Over the masts of fleets…
    *
    If I had another present
    I might own the keys of my yesterday
    And if my yesterday were here
    I might own all of my tomorrow…
    *
    Obscure is my progress up the long alleyway
    Leading to an obscure moon over the copper market.
    Here a palm tree relieves me of the load of the tower,
    And thought of songs carries simple tools
    Around me, to make a recurrent tragedy, and imagination
    A starving pedlar, roaming comfortably over the dust,
    As if I were unconcerned with what would happen
    To me at Julius Caesar’s festivities… before long!
    I and my beloved are drinking
    The water of happiness
    From one cloud
    And falling into one jar!
    *
    I disembarked at her port, nothing except
    That my mother lost her kerchiefs here…
    No tale for me here. I change
    Gods or negotiate with other gods. No tale for me here

    That I should burden my memory with barley
    And names of her guards who stand at my shoulder
    Waiting for the dawn of Tuthmosis. I have no sword,
    No tale for me here that I should divorce the mother who
    Gave me her kerchiefs to carry, each a cloud, a cloud over
    The old part of Acre… on departure!
    *
    Other things will happen,
    Henri will deceive
    Qalawun, after a while
    Clouds will rise red above the serried date palms…

Phases of Anat
    Poetry is our stairway to a moon which Anat hangs
    Over her garden, like a looking glass for lovers without hope, and she wanders
    Over the wilderness of herself, two women unreconciled:
    There is a woman who can turn water back to its spring.
    And a woman who sets fire to forests,
    As for steeds
    Let them dance for long over two abysses.
    No death there… and no life.
    My poem is froth of a gasping man, the scream of an animal
    At its climbing up
    And at its naked fall: Anat!
    I want both of you together, love and war, Anat
    And to Hell with me… I love you, Anat!
    And Anat is killing herself
    In herself
    And for herself
    And recreates space so that creatures can pass
    In front of her distant picture over Mesopotamia
    Over Syria. All directions are conform
    About the sceptre of lapis lazuli and the seal of the virgin: Do not
    Delay in this lower world. Come back from there
    To nature and natures, Anat!
    The water of the well dried up after you, valleys dried up,
    The rivers dried up after your death. Tears
    Evaporated from a pottery jar, and the air snapped
    From dryness like a piece of wood. We broke like the fence
    On your departure. Desires dried up in us. Prayer

    Has been calcified. Nothing lives after your death. Life
    Dies, like words between two travelling to hell,
    O Anat
    Tarry no longer in the lower world! Perhaps
    New goddesses have come down to us because of your going away
    And we have become subject to the mirage, perhaps the cunning shepherds
    Have found a goddess, near the dust, and priestesses have believed in her
    So come back, and bring back, bring back the land of truth
    And allusion
    The land of Canaan, the origin.
    The common land of your breasts,
    The common land of your thighs
    so that miracles may return
    To Jericho,
    At the door of the abandoned temple… No
    Death there and no life
    Chaos at the door of judgement. No tomorrow
    Comes. No past comes to say goodbye.
    No memories
    Fly from the direction of Babylon above our palm tree, no
    Dream entertains us, so as to appease a star
    Which is a button of your dress, O Anat
    And Anat creates herself
    From herself
    And for herself
    And flies after the Greek ships,
    Under another name,
    Two women who will never be reconciled…

    And the steeds,
    Let them dance long over