Fady Joudah ||
Two Poems
Sleeping Trees Between what should and what should not be
Everything
is liable to explode. Many times
I was told
who has no land has no sea. My father
Learned to fly in a dream.
This is the story
Of a sycamore tree he used to climb
When he was
young to watch the rain.
Sometimes it rained so hard it hurt.
Like being
Beaten with sticks. Then the mud would run red.
My
brother believed bad dreams could kill
A man in his sleep, he insisted
We
wake my father from his muffled screams
On the night of the day he took
us to see his village.
No longer his village he found his tree
amputated.
Between one falling and the next
There’s a
weightless state. There was a woman
Who loved me. Asked me how to say
treeIn Arabic. I didn’t tell her. She was sad. I didn’t
understand.
When she left. I saw a man in my sleep three times. A man I
knew
Could turn anyone into one-half reptile.
I was immune. I
thought I was. I was terrified of being
The only one left.
When we woke my father
He was running away from soldiers. Now
He
doesn’t remember that night. He laughs
About another sleep, he raised
his arms to strike a king
And tried not to stop. He flew
But mother
woke him and held him for an hour,
Or half an hour, or as
long as it takes a migration inward.
Maybe if I had just said it.
Shejerah, she would’ve remembered me longer. Maybe
I don’t know much about
dreams
But my mother taught me the law of omen. The dead
Know about
the dying and sometimes
Catch them in sleep like the sycamore tree
My
father used to climb
When he was young to watch the rain
stream,
And he would gently swing.
SOURCE***
The Tea and Sage Poem At a desk made of
glass,
In a glass walled-room
With red airport carpet,
An
officer asked
My father for fingerprints,
And my father refused,
So
another offered him tea
And he sipped it. The teacup
Template for
fingerprints.
My father says, it was just
Hot water with
a bag.
My father says, in his country,
Because the earth
knows
The scent of history,
It gave the people sage.
I
like my tea with sage
From my mother’s garden,
Next to the
snapdragons
She calls fishmouths
Coming out for air. A
remedy
For stomach pains she keeps
In the kitchen
where
She always sings.
First, she is Hagar
Boiling
water
Where tea is loosened.
Then she drops
In it a
pinch of sage
And lets it sit a while.
She tells a story:
The
groom arrives late
To his wedding
Wearing only one shoe.
The
bride asks him
About the shoe. He tells her
He lost it while
jumping
Over a house-wall.
Breaking away from
soldiers.
She asks:
Tea with sage
Or tea with
mint?
With sage, he says,
Sweet scent, bitter tongue.
She
makes it, he drinks.
Source
Salman Masalha
