Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
Translated from the Arabic by Sam Reichman
Rain Song
Your eyes are forests
of date trees at daybreak, that magic
hour, or balconies the moon flees from.
When they smile, vines sprout
leaves and spread. And lights
dance… like moons in a river
shuddering as an oar dips in and out
and the hour turns magic, stars pulsing
in your corneas… Your eyes drown
in a fog translucent as the sea
stroked by evening’s hands, the sea
of winter’s warmth, autumn’s shivering,
and death, and birth, and shadow and light;
a sob rises in me, fills me, a brutal ecstasy
embraces the sky, like a child
afraid of the moon—as if the curving mist
drank the clouds and, drop by drop,
melted in the rain… Children laugh
in the bower of vines, silent
birds tickle the trees…
rain…
rain…
rain…
Evening yawns, and still tears
stream heavily from the clouds, like a child
rambling before sleep—his mother, he went
to wake her a year ago, but she wasn’t there,
he couldn’t find her, he still can’t, soon, soon they
say the day after tomorrow, she’ll be back
she must return, she has to
his friends whisper there she is, next to the hill
she sleeps the sleep of graves she
eats the soil she drinks
the rain—as if a sad fisherman
gathered his nets, cursed
the water, fate, and scattered
a song where the moon fades.
Do you know which sadness
the rain sends? How the gutters sob
when it falls? How it fills
the solitary with loss? Endlessly, like spilled
blood, like the starved, like love,
like children, like the dead—like rain.
Your eyes take me; we wander
with the rain—across the Gulf’s waves
lightning sweeps the coasts of Iraq
with stars and seashells, as if
they had set their sights on dawn
until night pulled a curtain
of blood over them…
I shout at the Gulf O
Gulf O giver of pearls, O giver
of seashells and desolation
and the Gulf sobs
back O Gulf O giver
of seashells and annihilation…
I can almost hear Iraq
preserving the thunder, storing
the lightning in its plains and mountains
so that even if men ruptured the seal
the winds would never leave
a trace of Thamud in the valley.
I can almost hear
date trees drinking the rain, and the village
groaning, and refugees struggling
with oars and sails—thunderous
storms of the Gulf sing:
rain…
rain…
rain…
In Iraq, hunger—
crops scattered at harvest
to satisfy the crows and locusts; granaries
and stones grind, and, in the fields, surrounded
by humanity, mills turn—
rain…
rain…
rain…
How many tears did we shed the night
we left? We, afraid
of blame ourselves, blamed
the rain…
rain…
rain…
and since we were children, the sky
has clouded in the winter, the rain has
poured, and every year, when
the weeds sprouted, we’ve hungered, never
a year in Iraq without hunger—
rain…
rain…
rain…
And in every drop of rain
the red or yellow of a flower’s
embryo. And every hungry, naked
tear, and every drop of slave’s blood
spilled is a smile waiting for a new mouth
or a nipple flushing red on a newborn’s lips
in tomorrow’s adolescent world—this gift of life!
rain…
rain…
rain…
With it, Iraq will bud
and I will howl
at the Gulf O Gulf O
giver of pearls, seashells, desolation
and the echo will sob
O giver of seashells and annihilation
and the Gulf will scatter its many gifts on the shore:
brackish foam, seashells, what remains of the miserable,
drowned bones of refugees who still drink the Gulf’s
cries, decisions, desolations. And in Iraq
a thousand vipers drink the nectar
of a flower nourished by the Euphrates’ dew.
And I hear the echo reverberating in the Gulf—
rain…
rain…
rain…
in every drop a bud
reddens, yellows, sprouts,
and every tear of the starving, the naked,
every drop of the faithful’s blood spilled
is a smile waiting, a nipple flowering
in a babe’s mouth, tomorrow’s adolescence
the gift of life. And the rain pours.