An Oriental
Tapestry
Damascus
I
Six
thousands years old.
The damned
labyrinthine thing
is six thousands years old.
She was
conquered
a thousand times,
I am told,
And was liberated
a thousand more.
And still she stands.
And still she holds.
Still
she holds.
And men,
some of whom
were, indeed, great,
actually died for her,
or while fighting against her.
And women,
though
mostly
in historical silence,
wholeheartedly grieved for her,
and because of her.
And often were
the times
when she was bought
and sold.
Sold,
in open daylight,
as some menial old thing
on some old and dusty rack,
with little intrinsic worth,
or
none at all.
Or none at all.
And still she stands.
And still she holds.
Still
she holds.
One would
expect her
to be rather tired
of life by now.
Rather cynical.
Rather
bitter.
Rather cautious.
But she tends
to take herself
rather seriously still,
I
gather,
a bit too seriously,
I am afraid,
for
the times at hand.
II
I cannot
touch...
your history-stuffed walls.
I cannot
breathe...
your history-laden air.
I cannot
drink...
your history-flavored waters.
I cannot
hug...
your history-rich soil.
There is something
about them all
that
repels me,
o, Damascus.
It repels me.
III
Don’t
grow tired of me yet, mother.
Don’t
grow tired of me.
Don’t
grow bored.
Don’t
grow bored.
Don’t
unsheathe yet
that damned sword
of adulthood
and cut off that umbilical cord
that still binds to each other,
mother.
Mother.
Don’t
grow sore of me yet, mother.
Don’t
grow sore.
Don’t
grow sore.
I still cannot let go of you, mother,
I still cannot
ignore
my need for more
of your cradling,
more of your sheltering,
and more of that intrinsic essence
that makes you a mother, mother.
And makes me
just another nasty little client,
still in need of his…whore.
His whore, mother.
His
whore.
IV
Ah the
noise.
Ah the
noise.
This damnable pervasive
noise
in the background.
Dawn or
dusk,
it does not matter.
This
maddening noise never falters
to be present,
always present,
pervasively present,
in the background.
The noise
of traffic.
The noise
of asynchronous music.
The noise
of loud TVs.
And hushed whispers
from hundreds of crowded balconies.
The noise
of thousands of feet
shuffling along
some miserable street.
The noise
of children crying...playing.
The noise
of love-making
shameless,
deafening, defying.
The noise
of the huffing, puffing and yelling
as some retch roughs and beats
his daunted wife.
The noise
of prayers ascending
to an ever-unreachable heaven.
The noise
of birds flying.
The noise
of a cricket
in some unkempt backyard garden
still, miraculously,
and lucky me,
managing to be heard.
The noise
of stray cats meowing,
meowing,
meowing.
The noise
of some poor devil
sweeping the streets,
and, heaven knows,
the entire country needs sweeping.
The noise
of someone calling,
and calling,
and calling.
The noise
of crime and sin.
The noise
of innocence.
The noise
of the wailing
of
the collective conscience
of an entire nation,
crying up to heaven,
an equally stinking
unforgiving
heaven,
signifying
the total irrelevance of all that is divine.
All that is,
supposedly,
divine.
The noise
of someone walking away.
Somehow,
during my prolonged absence,
my people have managed
to kill silence.
The noise
of deep breathing,
and something coarse,
something rattling...
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