Its Bone For His-Excellency Poem by Freeyad Ibrahim

Its Bone is for his Excellency

Poem by: Shokhan Aziz

Translation: Freeyad Ibrahim



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(1)

They came amid the pitch darkness
Tumbling about like steers.
The disaster shook the walls.
They have pelt the heads
The gates fell
But is there a house over there..? !

Legions of hollow trumpets
Nobody hears
Who hears..? !

We bowed with our peeled heads
How could we ever raise them after the flood
But is there any head left to lift? !

Farewell
O cities! that the human bits adore
And the orphans` sighs won't ignore


Do rattle, O keys! do clink
Into the padlocks spit, don't shrink.

Goodbye
O sun, O the registrar of fates,
On the foreheads the destiny with dates
We are going to leave, to go our way
On bare feet which went astray
With erased eradicated faces
A steely wind is on our traces
Into our heads it drills, the walnut penetrated
An ember takes us to the land we aspirated.


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(2)

In a public referendum
It became clear that we read (six? six minutes a year) .
It seems that we overburden our memory and exhaust it by reading.
By, searching, studying, examining, scrutinizing
Our eyes we are consuming,
Neen, the referendum has been a confusing,
For we read a lot.

We read our identity cards and look at it carefully! ! !
To be sure of the presence of the picture duly
Our crooked whiskers,
Our facial wrinkles,
And the dust piled up on the eyelashes
The dust of the Time twists our necks and crashes.

We read the items on our provision cards with pleasure...
Then we imaging the underground, the riches, the blustered blessing without measure
And the affluent wealth and tremendous treasure.
Numberless lakes of Black Gold
The Age's Elixir, we are told,
Calamities, destructions, grinding successive wars, behold.

The country in which the most oil and natural gas are produced.
And where these two are the most needed, and due the shortage, the least used.

We fancy the long queues in front of gas -and-service stations for hours daily,
The police cudgels, the waving fingers that curse the air, and hand -against- hand - slapping sorrowfully, regretfully.

Behind us the high blazing towers are perpetually pumping,
The pipelines, numberless, via deserts, extend, bumping
Then we imagine the holes, potholes, cracks, clefts, on roads and ways.
Worn-out ends, damaged margins and edges of the sideways.
The stickiness of the streets, the overall garbage and rubbish, no dumping.

We recite slogans? Yes, but only political party, religious sectarian slogans and chants.
Advertisements cover the front walls,
Cheer and chant altogether with our long gowns and pants.

We are not reading only,
But we also adore our readings altogether with pictures illustrating delicately.
So that we confirm and fix the knowledge in mind explicitly.
For instance..
The pictures of the candidates for the post ministry and members of the parliamentary, we read preliminarily.

(ALAZAT WAL BART.)

The portraits of our gallant guides and leaders.
Droopy plump paunches bulging like oil barrels
Mule heads with no necks.
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(3)


One year ago our revered ready-made representatives had pelted
one another inside Parliament Hall with plates and spoons,
Merely because some of them had not got a bit of bone
in his allegedly obtained broth.
Whilst the others
Were devouring theirs, deliciously, lost in the taste of it, gasping gaily, greedily and breathlessly mouth dribbling water.
That's because our fellow-chef taking their side and sector,
had filled the dishes of his masters with bones
just to please, praise and flatter.
What have bones to do with democracy..?
Who knows..
Probably there is a unshakable relationship between gruel and democracy..!
Neen, we don't read only, you see, but we memorize too,
That's nor a mystery.
We've got a memory sealed by the minds and memories of prophets' and the Great-and-the Glorious of history.


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(4)


We learn by heart the songs of clowns who roar and clamour amazingly,
Who squall squeakily, who yell yieldingly.
Piercing our eardrums with their hurly-burly, mercilessly,
All social sections hear them indiscriminately
Among whom there are children, teenagers, the overage, merely
Because we use them for our (private phones) ringing, cringingly.

For the clearness of mind, violation of customs discordantly,
Public rules, attendance and presence
in the public and social association dissonant undoubtedly.