Al-Hilla Paper, A Collection of Poems by Jabbar Al-Kawwaz

Jabbar al-Kawwaz
Al-Hilla Paper
The Virgin; The Sunrise; The Sunset
Poetic Texts Translated by
Dr. Hussain Alwan Hussain

A. The Virgin

To Abbas Abid Jassim: A Remarkable Friend

Ishtar Gate
In the wilderness, the one-eyed hog popped up. He told her frankly: "Tammuz is dead".
The shadow paled, and the day-light blackened
Who taught her immortality?
Who kindled time in her breasts?
Sand drinks her.
In her towers is the glow of man,
And the surge of rivers.
And in the eyes of Mashkheesho, who
Sleeps awake,
Lays a horizon of seas.

The Lion of Babylon
Lightening is afraid of him. Rain shuns him. Who knows his ordeal and retells the hissing of secrets?
I can hear below him: a crying brick, and a singing tablet.
So, when will the dead arise?
I circle around him, but can see no more than maimed box-thorn;
Dead grasshoppers; dunes of echo;
And the bones of castles.
When will the fasting people arise
To breakfast with blood?

The Municipality Clock
Asleep for the last thirty years
Its silence made the doves panic,
So, the wings of light rained
With the mark of darkness.
Who else strikes the sun flowers,
And awakens the weeds of the soul,
In the middle of dreams?

The Hanging Gardens
The water has dried up, and the gardeners have taken to robbing laughter and flowers
Its woods is rubbish,
Its fruits are begging boys,
Its horizons are the dead speaking the night,
Its citrus are ash and shrapnel.
How can the dead sing in the hooligans slaughter house?
Death is a whim;
And the trees is a saddle,
Stolen by the nomads,
Like a full-moon in the desert.

The Grand Suq (Market)
Who the ether obliterated his name?
Who killed the poet and poems?
Its shores are stagnant;
The dreamer is a match-stick;
Outside is a mere phantom;
Whereto did the guards depart?
The night has smuggled the craters,
Leaving the people in distress.
To the way of its marks, I hunt the wells,
To throw my mad pretext.
How can I communicate in its darkness with the white page?
When will the gloss of date-fruit be reborn?
The wolves are robbing me,
And I am dispersed in the wells.
Am I worn by a gown?
Or by a phantom of fire?
***
Our eyes are cactus,
Our fingers are tender,
Our pains are folly,
And our shadows are rocks.
Like breeze among the remnants of grief are my days,
And my grief deposits in its stems the meadows of feud,
To tell the sleepy horizon:
"Give us a face that grinds the wind of towers;
And a cup that awakens in the eye-lashes of Babylon
A torrent to sleep;
A sedition that could only be crushed in Babylon.
Give us Babylon"
"Where is it now?"

The Sun s Minaret
Was it really a sun-temple?
It is a vision for the Sun s death,
As He accepts the downpour of women tears.
It is the coffin of history,
Retelling fairy tales
As He sleeps in its water-tomb.
Ring not the bell of dreams
For Ali is still at prayer.

Babul-Hussain Quarter
In the ninth day of Muharram, the banners turn into bleeding doves, and the horizon becomes ash.
The Banners are waving over the heads of days:
Black, red, white, yellow.
The Howdah is the column of Heaven…
And the Son of the Masonry Master.
The procession in black days is sunrise;
Reverberating everywhere:
Ashora ! Ashora !

Babul-Mash-had Suburb
On the right of the out-goer lie the mound of "Biris", the village of "Hercules", and "Ibrahim s Chapel".
Who opened the bolts of vision?
Was he Sadaqa?
He captured eternity:
For there is no such a wide way in this wind,
And no lamp that glitters the soul, but the noise of the dead.

Ali s Chapel
The Battle of Siffeen: blood and prayer, the memory of Quran
Clouds accompany him
To catch from him the rain of saints;
His breath in the pasture of prayer
Are the marks of war-tears,
Reciting the Opening of the wound.
And Siffeen approaches dawn,
Without drawing on the stair,
But the steps of the soul.

Prophet Job s Well
O God! Help me in my ordeal, unburden my pain, and take my hand to relief!
Ever since the Euphrates kicked the air,
His hands were the land.
Did you see the yellow plants,
The slug of wells, and the pus of the years?
He is still staying there
Reciting his repentance
Unto the wind of forgiveness.
*****
The cup is in the cluster: who drinks death?
The salt is in the wells: who ploughs the food?
Beauty is an illusion: how can the coffin hypnotize it?
The Light is in the meadows: how can the cloud sing in the phantom?
*****
In the way to its marks…
The steps are no longer a package of pain,
For not every passer of memory draws the eyes in his echo.
My pearls are drowned;
How can I domesticate my days?
My days are a trap;
I am the web of rubies.
My finger punctures the air,
For the downpour of clouds washes what has been left…

Coffee-Houses
Coffee-houses arise when the people are asleep.

The Coffee-House of Sayyid Shakir: A cataract that fills the corners with secrets.
The Coffee-House of Abu-Sraj: A ship over-laden with wine and smoke.
The Coffee-House of Al-Khulood: The mirrors are silent, and the chairs sip tea at leisure.
The Coffee-House of Al-Jandool: Lost its glamour when the war blew the pipe of fire.
The Coffee-House of Sumer: Behind the ambiguous glass are ambiguous faces and caged darkness.
*****
The blue-eyed spinster,
The pregnant woman with her fragile crutch,
The baby on the steps,
The suq assumes they eat the chat of villagers.
The wives cover themselves with days
To rob from their apples some doves of memory;
How do the pigeons mourn while the clock has locked the time?
I see in my belonging an estrangement;
And my estrangement is a forest glittering in days:
Its heads are buds,
Fallen out of the schedule of death;
Its forests do not know my contours:
For I conceal them.
What I do not conceal
Evaporates like a dream in the orchard.
The one-eyed Friday won t use my ecstasy in the eternity of wine;
Thursday is mad,
Still dizzy with the bleeding of discourse;
And the poets find it easier to sleep on the steps of what the critics say;
Where are they now?

The Poet Sayyid Haidar Al-Hilli
Weeping is a door, and lament is a departure.
Time has stumbled, so who cares?
O may you be saved of the great pain!

The (Weaver) Poet Salih Al-Kawwaz
The pot whispers only from pain: complaining to water what he had encountered from fire.
Poetry got him;
So the termites devoured his gown.
Where is the loom?
The poems are in the warp,
Hearers have devoured wailing,
Leaving in the corners
The papers of death.

The Poet Safiyyuddin Al-Hilli
Hilla, Nineva, Mardin, Cairo
Our eyes are white,
Our bogs are green,
Our lanterns are black,
Our streams are red.

The (Illiterate) Poet Hummadi Al-Kawwaz
Walking in poetry unafraid of other poets for the word is his
The glow of poetry is kindled with the questions.
How can the darkness in the fingers put it out?
The Five fingers;
Glory is to the thumb and the forefinger;
For they may give birth to poetry without doing a favour;
Whereas the darkness is kindled by days
Above the heads of birds and discourse.
****
The days have painted in my path a well wherein my shadows drown;
My jewels confess now of the fakery of time.
My fingers still dive in the marathon of water.
The night stars still tickle my nakedness,
Making the years fall on my arms like the swarm of bugs.
The bugs are the memory of the poor;
Whereas the hot summer is the orchard of water,
And the irrigating wheel of the flower.

Personae
The Villager: Importune to prolong his stay, like the beard of a convict who is sentenced to death.
The Soldier: Vying with his bullet bag, plus the fame of war.
The Pensioner: The year has just four (salary) months.
Who hung the wind of dreams
In the bag of the mad lady next door?
The Student: The show ticket has been lost, and the furnishing of days has been put off.
The Child: Plays with the ball, in the stadium of delusions.

The Quarter of Al-Jami ain
Where are its universities, councils, and bars? Where is the place itself now?
Who clad her with two dresses?
Who wove its worn robe?
The river is still praying
As it sees her in the worst of old age.
The time has gone
When she could brag of her poets.

The Quarter of Al-Mahdiyya
My home is there; guarded by the well, and drunk by the date-palm tree
Lanes that lead to Imams
Leading to ruins,
Leading to hunger,
Leading to the naked,
Leading to madness,
Leading to resurrection.

The Quarter of Al-Taq
The three met here, inheriting the state of Al-Taq, and the state of poetry.
There wept the poet Ibnul- Arandas,
And wailed the poet Sahib Ubaid Al-Hilli,
And trod Sheikh Ibnul-Mufeed.
There were the offerings of the festivals slaughtered
In the pilgrims processions.

The Quarter of Al-Wardiyya
Its horizons are the heads of the date-palm trees
It resembles a wood of dead heads;
Buds of fire,
Covered by birds,
With water-lilies.

The Quarter of Al-Ta ees (The Unhappy)
He was not happy at any day, nor unhappy any day; so he is not to be blamed.
He dreams of sleeping on the step of questions:
His days do not judge him in his despair;
Nor do his lanes blame him in the troubling wind.
He only dreams of sleeping
To rest.

Al-Furat Summer Cinema-House
Loaves with yellow pickle
Nava Ron cannons pound the township of Qal at Salih;
Hamlet kisses Abla;
Hitchcock is a bird in the sky of smoke;
" Alia and Isam" are guests at Al-Hilla these days;
And the "Notterdam Hump" sleeps under the Old Bridge.

Babylon Summer Cinema-House
A Treacherous Memory
Ismael Yaseen still roams near the river,
Enquiring about its screen;
Yousif Wahbi has the flu;
And Shaiboob is lost in the Desert of Iraq.

Al-Hamra Cinema-House
Her sky is a carnival
Whenever I pass by her cite,
I smell the air of the past,
And carefully listen to the cries of the Red Indian,
And the songs of Fareed Al-Atrash.

Al-Furat Winter Cinema-House
Grenade Seeds, Shami Kebab, Corn, Zalabia, Sherbet
Before her death,
She squat on earth to sort out the Ead-films,
Walked behind the coffin of Al-Hilla Intermediate School,
Said good-bye to the fish-mall,
And wrote her will:
"Beware of the TV;
Beware of the Video-Recorder."

Babylon Winter Cinema-House
The narrow lanes sing, the river dances, and we are in a dream
When the flying rug enters its niche,
The darkness dusts the air;
And the children s eyes spring in songs:
Ala Baghdad,
Ala Baghdad.
Muhammed Abdul-Wahab dismounts his picture
To sing during the interval;
And upon the sword of Antara,
Juliet sleeps awake,
And Flash Gordon retires from aviation.

Al-Shafaheeni
A poet and a scholar clergyman; a scholar clergyman and a poet
"Lo, my days, be a hole;
Lo, my palm, be a saddle,
For perhaps my pleasures kindle the horizons of age."
That is what Al-Shafaheeni said.
"And perhaps my sleeping poems
Make from its ribs the stem of wind;
And perhaps the line of bricks of Sinimmar
Grants us the secret of the Kingdom."
Great Solomon did not say that.
****
I came to you and in my steps are cries that scream without a mouth
Shivering the daggers of the ribs, pawned by the sword in the wrist.

Al-Hilla Secondary School
Stand up for the teacher, paying him his due respect, for teachers are akin to prophets. Is the poet still dreaming about the teacher?
He who enters it is frightened;
He who leaves it is frightened;
Just like a castle of anxiety,
It does not grant Indulgence Bond,
But to the loony.

The Lion of Babylon
Centuries pass and he does not lift his feet;
His roar encircles him and the grass shivers.
Nobody is aware of his chronic diseases,
Surrounded by the doctor s clinics;
His bricks are travelers
As the Orient Train snorts at the village of Sureideeb.
*****
[Once upon a time, there were:
- Wild Doves chanting fairy tales for the insane river to comprehend.
- Sparrows in mad love with migrating horizons in dead summer.
- Sailors robbed the river and sold herbs at the price of broad beans.
- Camels under whose hoofs milk sprang, making the children rejoice.]

The Hanging Gardens
History is hung in her wrist
Its ruins is a prison;
Its gates is a hospital;
Its hills is hell.

Serah (A Jewish Woman)
Her house is now in ruins, and the termites have devoured her Book.
The blue-eyed spinster,
With her elegant crutch,
Was buried in the babies graveyard,
Where her dust weeps whenever the moon becomes full.

Ihyaho Hiskel (A Goldsmith)
A neighbor of Sharara s Pickle Store, he still pays his visits at midnight, minding the market s ghosts.
Sits with his gold-brimmed spectacles,
On his golden chair,
With golden stairs leading to his goldsmithery.
Where is he now?
Who remembers the art of his fingers,
Keen to beautify unknown women,
But his gold necklaces
Where they swagger among the neighbor s tombs?

Mahmoud Al-Tuhlub,
I am my freedom; if they spoiled it, then all the earth falls down, so do the names of our fathers.
Liquor ruined him,
So he had to sell broad-beans in the market of poetry;
His cart is still there,
Preserving his eulogy,
And the satire of Fu ad the Beast.

Sheikh Yusuf Karkoosh
Dar, Daran, Door. The elephant jumped over the barrel. The History of Hilla.
In his white turban
And gown,
He taught us to conquer darkness,
Decipher the alphabet.
How is he now?
Hilla has slept in papers,
So how can she see him now?
The distance has widened;
Neither musk draws him nearer,
Nor serene belonging.
I used to see in him
A city wearing a turban and
Picking the gown for fashion.

Shakir Al-Ta ee, the Painter
The dead have celebrated the paintings, and Shakir has died with a smile.
His paintings are without crutches,
With colours flying into the skies.
Sleep hunts a bird and opens darkness.
I can still see him swing with the boys;
Drunken,
And the painting is empty from him in dreams.

B. The Sunrise
"Al-Hilla in the language refers to the people who are staying in a great number at a location. The pre-Islamic poet Al-A sha has recited:
There were in the tribe of Shaiban, if you were informed,
A dome and a quarter of al-Hilla and their peaks.
And Al-Hilla is the name of many locations, the most famous of which is Al-Hilla of Banu-Mizyad. This is a big town, between Baghdad and Al-Kufah, whose older name was Al-Jam ain (The two mosques). It has a length of sixty seven degree and a one-sixth, and a width of thirty two degree. The balance of its day is fifteen degree, and the longest of its days is fourteen hours. The first person to build and reside in it was Saiful-Dawla (The Prince) Sadaqa ibin Mansur ibin Dubais ibin Ali ibin Mizyad of Banu Asad, in the month of Muharram, 495 A.H.
(Yaqut Al-Hamawi, Mu jam Al-Buldan "The Dictionary of Countries", III. 327)

Sunrise
Did you see them as they wear the earth a dream?
Did you see the dream turning into wounds in the cup?
Did you see the wound a thunder attacking their quarter?
Did you see the thunder on their papers?
Did you see paper scattered in their rags?
Did you see rags murmuring in the lanes and houses?
*****
Here I am opening in the cloud of my fate a history;
I have no woe, but the rolling of my shades.
Between a step and another there is sand.
My dream is a rose;
And my consolation is rain.
As my eyes decipher the book of the past,
My speech becomes dumb,
And then the victim of the bell of silence.

Shandal Public Bathhouse
Its bricks tell the facts of fathers; its water is a flame at the will of the blazer.
Its ruins have blossomed days;
They suddenly whisper a panicking chant
Did its flame descended in the hour of the resurrection?
Where are the boys?
For the mat is honey,
And the speech is a burden.

Al-Mahdiyya Public Bathhouse
Its bricks are women in the nets of men, and its water is kindled by the sand.
We were told the story of the boys:
- They saw the crescent of the festival in the water store.
- They lured the serpent to the bed of their dream.
- They caught the stars of the night, till their woes rained a weeping.
- Their feet deciphered the herbs in the morning.
- They misapplied the "mixture" in the corners, so the screams rose high.
- Who talked to the door, rebuked the basement, and talked briefly in the cloud of fog?

Witwit Public Bathhouse
Its bricks tell the story of the Fairy, Taf Battle, the Martyr s scream, and what the Forum Preacher in the morning of

Ead.
Speeches are fresh
And the children are naked
- Who taught Al-Shimr Ead s Prayer?
- The river must take a bath today.
- Tomorrow the Ead s crescent appears.
- No, the day after tomorrow.
- No, No. The day after the day after tomorrow.
- Lo Ead, of silver; Lo Ead of gold;
Who taught the master to fake lethargy?
- Lo Ead, in what state have you come back, oh Ead?
- With bygones or with something new in you?
- You are the crescent of Ead.
- No. It is she.
- We shall meet on the third day of Ead at Job s wells.
- Women and Dabka dance.
- The Ead s morning is tomorrow.
- No, the day after tomorrow.
- No, No. The day after the day after tomorrow.
And the water flows unheeding.

Al-Jawadain Public Bathhouse
It has Republican bricks.
The haughtiest among the public bathhouses;
Its age is calculated by the liters and minutes.
The water has a citron made of olden gold,
And from the violet of grievances.
It does not rain in the heart
For some downpour may strangle the basin,
Planting in the heart the sigh of reunion.
- How can I come to you when you are the water?
- Your shores have no roses to hug me,
And no thorns to prick me.
- The faces of babies are a dream.
- The flocks of river gulls have gone
So the women wept at shore.
- How can I draw on your shore my sighs and you are with me?
- Water that is like trees.
- Trees clapping their wings to hold me a cloud of weeping.
- Your water has its prayer;
- Where are you now?
******
[Water is blood/ A child s tear at Al-Hattabat market/ A shoulder swinging at the beating of the drum/ wounds/ Girls like gazelles and a boy falls to the bottom/ A bridge eaten by fish/ Sailors afraid of swimming/ Herbs, vegetables, and darkness/ Goats, hooks, bottles, and cigarette butts/ A sky/ The way of death does not know the flow of grief/ The death of my brother/ The burning of waves/ The chat of women at dawn/ Delusion/ Hilla with two sides/ One is to the water, the other is to the water/ Water is stubbornness/ A dress/ Hunger/ Annihilation/]

Abbas the Beast
(His stories are shared with Mahmoud Al-Tuhlub, but death has kidnapped them both, so they were lost upon the streets.)
Handsome and glamorous like a deer;
A proverb of the urban;
The first verse line of satire;
Killed under the tires;
Does the township of Musayyab know
That the man killed on its streets
Holds in his shirt a rose of verse,
A satire of darkness, a prayer to dawn,
And a memory of a rendezvous?

C. The Sunset

In Hilla Prison
(Its inmates are like chicks: inhabited by lice, and drunk by thirst.)
Its Black Tower fed the prisoner s tents with fairy tales;
Together with the dialogues of Solomon with the birds.
I was just a kid clinging to my mother s mantle,
Gazing at death chains on tree legs;
I could see a horizon in the cage of winds;
And see a rope swinging to become a serpent for them;
Testing a broken tooth to tell the names of the dead.
I could see:
Lanes and tents and cages of blood and tears;
Hunger familiar with the taste of death,
And opens in its mandible an icon of what had happened,
And what will not.
I was just a kid:
There was Suhail: asleep in a blue corner;
And Jarmatt with his bamboo legs and black bedouin face,
That takes from the sun the its honey,
And from the death the cruelty of two banishments.
(Jarmatt died of TB, and Suhail was drowned.)
I could see:
Books and papers and eyes with tears
Joining the cries of mothers,
And baskets of dates and rubbish food.
I could see myself amid the noise of the drowned breaths,
Among the worries of the multitude.
I could see the people: propped wood, and thatched lanes,
And locked shackles, and sooty nights.
Oh God!
(His noose was playing the light of death.)
Where has the age gone to?
And how has the pulse of time gone asleep
In the expanse of sand?

Hilla
(She used to sing at my hands when I was a kid;
She used to know of me what I don t know;
She knew the sweetest of my steps, my stones, my home,
And the summer basement raining with pleasure and peace.)
I look for her among my cut fingers,
Among my yellow papers,
In the lightening of February,
And in the heat of June.
I look for her in the waves of the river,
In the black clouds, and the far off woods.
I look for her in
The market of the wood-gathering women,
The market of pot-makers,
The market of the blacksmiths,
The market of coppers,
And the market of the master.
Where is it sleeping now?
Here the clock is bereaved,
And there the bridge is dying,
And the river is weeping.
Where is it now?
Is it in the mosque, or the stadium?
Is it in the street, or in the cage?
Or is in lanes that lead to lanes that lead to vacuum?
Hilla
That was a bygone time;
A place the rains in memory.
For the years have not marched
Except where the papers are most vulnerable.
Hilla
The stream of life;
The book of estrangement;
The bleeding of dreams.
Hilla
A banner that has not gained from time but the spears.
Its robe has kindled love like battalions of a prophetic dream,
Has Illuminated the heart with prayer and goodness.
Its strands know well the cradle of love
In the desert of the wilderness.
Its domes are lamenting doves;
Its days are the pastures of time.
There is no question but hers,
No answer without her.
She is the start and she is the finish.
Who can be her saviour now from the follies of time?
I can still see her:
The apple of my life,
The companion of lonely nights,
The clamour of pleasure echoed in breath.
I pass by her houses, orchards, schools, shores, wells, and marks,
but cannot see my soul anywhere.
Who can save her from herself?
Who can save me from myself
That has burdened me with the pains of time?

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