Courtesy of the artist, “drylands” and “You again” appear in “Fever Dreams”, published by Crisis Chronicles in 2011.

www.pw.org/content/yahia_lababidi

Yahia Lababidi is featured in Edition: Refresh!

The words in a poem are merely the tip of the iceberg,
the bulk of poetry belongs to a mass beneath the surface.
Invisible words trail the visible and give them force
just like printed paper, backed by gold, gains in value.

But, what can we do, we work with what we have
using the modest symbols we possess to speak
of that which we do not own. Like incantations,
certain combinations set a sentence or soul in motion.

It’s the same with artists who use shadow to bring out light
or musicians who lend instruments their breath and limbs,
to summon music from thick air. So, too, with poets
who conjure hidden correspondences with letters

Which is to say, words only matter up to a certain point
(when you’re using words to lose them). A poem is only
as good as the unseen poem it mirrors or, in other terms,
the Spirit that it harnesses and which swims through it.

It should seem odd
to buy and sell flesh
for who can measure love or pain
Yet you can pick up almost anything
for a neat bargain in the city -
quick fixes and hired company
What you don’t bargain for
is the heartache, indigestion
or the hunger shortly after
The price of bloated pleasures
is delivered in installments
long after unwrapping a stranger
You see, there’s nothing casual
about intimacy, or passing
through a temple, without bowing
Bodies are like poems, that way
only a fraction of their power
resides in the skin of things.

I visit my grandfather quite often, lately
sometimes, he knows he is dead
and is almost apologetic for it
with a kind, sheepish look on his face

As if guilty of securing a reprieve
yet still grateful for a little more life
the way he was in his last days
treating every morning as a gift

Other times he’s not sure himself
(as we tend to be about mortality)
and I suspect he’s there to teach me
something to do with temperance

When he lived, and wanted to tease a little
with mock awe, he’d pronounce me a ‘Philosopher’
a stoic of few, considered words, it was not for him
ponderous conversation or the big questions

In his last act, he was a humble man of the Book
which meant he found the echoes of my many books
(delivered in world historic accent, no less)
either amusing or frankly incomprehensible

For such talk, he reserved an arsenal of smiles
from the indulgent, to the gently sarcastic
hands folded neatly in his lap, legs almost braided
I’d tell him he resembled a human handkerchief

There are some, like Nietzsche, who take the noise
within, and send it out into the world, much amplified
Giddoo, as I called him, was un-Nietzschean that way,
he took the world din in, held it close, and hushed it.

What’s the difference, he quietly asks
between a death wish and life-weariness
or taedium vitae, as it was first uttered
not too long ago, in Latin, in 1759

By what name, did it go before that date
and, tell me, is it bitterness or wisdom
to surrender the gifts of youth, life itself
and say, thank you, enough is plenty

Must one wring the fruit utterly dry
or can we return the ticket half-used
no longer enamored by this glinting orb
or its ration of enchanting vanities?

Could it be, that from the start,
the thing he sought, this demon-angel,
was always just outside the page

That, after swimming the length of the alphabet,
with fine gills and deranged senses, he created
an opening for others but a trap for himself?

If so, then slipping through those watery bars
was an imperative, a chastened mysticism -
and freedom to write in the air: to be human

Tell me, have you found a sea
deep enough to swim in
deep enough to drown in

waters to engage you
distract you, keep you
from crossing to the other shore?

You again, of the singing wound
here again, lost and found and lost
trafficking in metaphysics and eternity
as the nearest hopes

where to, pilgrim
outdistancing chasms
rationing emotions
seeking sustenance

for the self too subtle and proud
for words
nocturnal flower, nurtured solitude
watered night

there you go, restraining the impulse
to say it all at once
even surrounded by silence
still filled with noise

now, having stirred some thrumming
hour when the moon throws
her full-bodied light
over all, like a silver screen night
of silent films, the whirring
of the reel.