7
Shade
…………….
when night falls
in his silence
The heart is filled with rhythm
Look behind the window:
There is a shadow
dissipates loneliness
does not sleep…
Even after the vigil is surrendered
Morning glow
Smiling between the hills
Makes your shadow long
on the narrow paths
following you
but
when you lose the way
disappears
Before reaching the ambush of spiders
The sun will be behind
And the shadow is longer
extending in front of you
before reaching the crowd
again it disappears
you do not know
Maybe
from a far angle
it looks at you furtively.
when
your feet tremble,
you fall
But the shadow
does not fall
night will makes the warriors
fall asleep again
But the shadow alone does not sleep
Sleep in those moments that
are behind the window
dissipates loneliness
8
A Silent Language
……………….
Sulphur
is waiting to explode-
let the Sulphur sleep,
let rivers
travel abroad in whiteness
to the breast’s source.
expel the dark spirit shadow
from the mind
until the streams
know the way for themselves,
and stones
change chatter to silence-
so the earth
may hear stones breathing.
When the beach is quiet
the Earth
may look after all its spirits.
I don’t know
how to accommodate
the days’ restlessness
the nights’ lack of resolve, leaving
a mournful winter
and the sadness of flowers
under the canopy
of refugee poetry.
9
Phases
………..
Do not die
on this harsh day.
Tired fingers
will never be able
to wipe away
the frozen tears
clinging to the eyelashes
of the shores of vision.
Colors can no longer
be told apart.
Thoughts flutter
in black and white.
Everything is fragile,
passing you by
like a headless wind.
Sometimes,
a hand covers your face
so that your lips
will not move again.
After so many tedious sights,
you no longer recognize
the faces of those passing by.
Two figures,
as far as the eye can see,
walk slowly,
as though they were stepping
upon the eggshells
of life.
The crowing of a rooster
and the butcher’s knife
mingle with their voices,
like a conversation
taking place beneath the waves—
melodies without meaning.
And does speech
always have a face?
One of them wishes
to be the one
who sleeps while awake,
while the other
utters extraordinary words.
Did you not see
the bird
that flew from the cage
of its chest?
Take two steps back.
Now look.
Autumn has settled
upon the branches.
Do not let
the leaves of your shirt
fall.
And if you lose your way,
disappear.
It is less
than being lost.
Traffic will not stop
for a coffin
swaying beneath
that remorseful sun,
the sun that fell
into the hole
of the horizon.
Tomorrow
it will rise early,
one sleepy eye opening,
as though it had never tasted
the bitterness of departure,
casting the shadows
of gravestones
darker than yesterday.
A single glance
is enough.
Soon you will find yourself
overcome by sleep,
leaning upon
the arm of a notch.
The destination is far.
So do not argue
with yourself.
You have nothing left to do
but descend from the roof
upon the ladder of time,
down to the bottom,
where you will find a cradle
in which a soul lies—
a stranger
to immense dreams.
How fortunate you are.
You were not robbed
during your exile
behind the walls of knowledge.
No whisper swallowed you
beside the remains
of a dark barrier.
One night,
you fell
from the jaws
of an old she-wolf
and landed
upon the pavement
of an empty street.
You hurried on
beside the colored banners.
The screams
did not cease.
The dreams
rubbed their eyes.
There was a lonely refuge.
A cradle
waiting below.
A soul
still lying on its back,
waiting—
waiting
for your return.
10
O Poetry…!
…………
O poet,
wearied by the upheavals of time,
O silent one,
bleeding quietly through the hush—
do not grieve.
Doubt, cowardice, and racism:
three lethal plagues
dwelling in the souls of rabid dogs,
barking at you
without cause.
When the law
puts on the face of the executioner,
and the distance disappears
between innocence and predation,
the boars go blind
and mistake gazelles for wolves—
for their eyes
cannot bear
the gleam of fangs.
Mandelstam’s poem,
The Kremlin Mountaineer,
was whispered only
among his companions,
yet even that whisper
was heavy with death.
In Santiago,
inside the Santa María Clinic,
after the military coup,
it was the tempest of poetry—
not cancer—
that carried Neruda
to his grave.
Had poetry not existed—
nor Gumilev—
would Akhmatova
ever have sung
her Requiem?
Would The Pisan Cantos
ever have been born
inside Saint Elizabeths Hospital?
And would the poet
have received the Bollingen Prize
had inspiration not whispered to him
from the deepest chambers
of suffering?
Still,
Bakr Ali
bleeds from the mouth of the poem,
and the hour of farewell
has not yet come.
For the difference
between him and Lorca
is this:
the echo of his bleeding
still reverberates
through the throat
of the grave.
O Poetry—
without you,
we would never have known
that even silence
could become a flute.
Notes
Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) — Russian poet. He died in 1938 in a transit camp near Vladivostok.
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) — Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, known as Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet who is believed to have been poisoned in hospital only twelve days after the bloody military coup that overthrew his friend, the socialist president Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973, led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Nikolai Gumilev (1886–1921) — Prominent Russian poet and critic, and one of the founders of the Acmeist school of poetry. He was the husband of the renowned poet Anna Akhmatova. He was executed by Soviet authorities in 1921 on fabricated charges. Their son, Lev Gumilev, spent much of his youth (1938–1956) in Soviet labor camps (the Gulag) because of his family background.
The Pisan Cantos — A sequence of poems by Ezra Pound, the celebrated American poet and critic regarded as one of the central figures of literary modernism in the twentieth century. His life became entwined with imprisonment and thirteen years of confinement in psychiatric institutions because of his political positions during World War II.
The Bollingen Prize for Poetry — A prestigious American literary award granted every two years to an American poet in recognition of either an outstanding new collection or lifetime achievement. It is administered by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and is considered among the highest honors in American poetry.
Bakr Ali — A poet of the 1980s generation and one of the founders of the Union of the Unemployed in the early 1990s. Following the March Uprising of 1991, he led peaceful demonstrations. He published a single poetry collection, Nights Darker Than Your Hair, only thirty-four pages long. He was arrested on August 16, 1994, by the Asayish security forces and imprisoned for six days. On September 1, 1994, he was assassinated in Bīsārānī Street in central Sulaymaniyah, shot twice in the mouth while security forces were dispersing a peaceful protest in front of the governorate building.
Note: written Dates of these texts between1988-2026
