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Who am I to say to you
what I say to you?
when I’m not a stone burnished by water
to become a face
or a reed punctured by wind
to become a flute . . .
I’m a dice player
I win some and lose some
just like you or a little less . . .
born beside the water well
and three lonely trees like nuns,
without parade or midwife,
I was given my name by chance
belonged to a family by chance
and inherited its traits, features, and illnesses:
First, arterial disease and high blood pressure
Second, shyness when addressing my parents
and the tree/my grandmother
Third, a hope in being cured of influenza
with a cup of hot chamomile
Fourth, a laziness when speaking about does and larks
Fifth, a boredom in winter nights
Sixth, a failure in singing
I had no hand in being,
it was coincidence that I turned out . . . male
and coincidence that I saw a pale
moon like a lemon tree encroaching on women in late nights.
And I did not try hard to find a mole
in my most private body parts
It was possible that I not be,
that my father not be
my mother’s husband,
and that I could have resembled
my sister who screamed then died
without noticing she was alive
for only an hour
and did not know her mother . . .
Or I could have been a dove’s egg
before the chick cracks the shell
It was coincidence that I was
the one alive in the bus accident
because I didn’t board the bus:
I’d forgotten about existence and its matters
reading through the night before
a love story in which I impersonated the author
and the lover/the victim, then became love’s martyr
but alive in the traffic accident
I had no hand in playing with the sea
though I was a reckless child who fancied
sauntering around water’s gravity
as it called: Come to me!
I had no hand in surviving the sea,
a human seagull saved me when he saw the waves
catch and paralyze my arms
And I could have not been afflicted
with the jinn of the Mu’allaqat
had the house’s gate faced north
instead of overlooking the sea . . .
and had the army patrol not seen the village smoke
baking the night,
had fifteen martyrs
been able to rebuild the barricades,
and had that agricultural place not broken
I might have become an olive tree,
a geography teacher, an expert
in the ants’ kingdom
or one of echo’s watchmen
