Seven Eyes, A Poem by Muwaffaq Muhammed

Seven Eyes
By: Muwaffaq Muhammad (From: To be in Dust is Better than among the Savage)
Translated by Dr Hussain Alwan Hussain (2008)
In the freezer of the dead,
With a terrified eye,
He recognized the face of his brother.
He gazed in his pierced forehead,
And saw a burnt mother,
And a crow pecking up in his father s eye.
*****
In the mosque, he prayed to God;
And froze the flesh of his brother:
Afraid of the stink of war,
And in mercy of the bird bleeding inside.
*****
She brought him alone from the South;
In the graveyard, there was
A mound of old women with no plant;
Black are the coffins of the dead.
Have you ever seen tombs turned upside down?
Have you ever seen
A crowd of funerals weeping,
Hueing the wood of the coffin
With the missing of a mother:
Lapping near the grave her coffin,
Howling with a scattered heart -
"Here am I my son, to die with you"?
******
At the Imam s Shrine –
Where the killed run above the heads of the living –
There was a bunch of women,
Braving themselves to carry the coffin,
Asking the martyrs to give them a hand;
Nobody listened.
A minaret stooped its stature,
Opened the coffin,
Gazed upon the minced flesh,
And raised it to a frowning moon in the sky.
Seeing the blood, the moon cracked;
He prayed unto it "God is Greater",
And covered the corpse with light.
*******
Rest in peace, lo neighbor:
Examine the Corpse coming to you,
He is in your custody this night;
So strangle him upon your hands
So that he may recognize after death his home,
And see the Mother who has raised him in love:
A blind heap made of grief and gloom.
Tell him to wipe Her eyes,
To snatch from Her her eyesight;
So that She can see his face
Engraved in clay and blood.
*******
In the pan,
And in flames neighing with oil,
The shovel pours my heart
Whose beating lasted for fifty years
Of noisy, stagnant wars.
******
Are we still alive?
Yes indeed we are!
Residing in the Captives Suburb;
The Suburb of the Lost;
And the Suburb of the Martyrs.

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