My Picture - Muhammad Harbi

I copy texts from the excess of clouds

I am not a poet

all prophecies have concluded

I returned alone in a crippled ascension

I am my poem, and outside I gape at my image

I am my image and outside a poem writes me

at a café near the sea

I am my mirror . . . and inside there is an image

that echoes my voice and copies my poem

I am my shadow, and he who walks beyond the light

is a devil in my image, sipping the spirits out of my coffee

in order to stop me from writing

I am the writer of the will, the owner of the corpse

the letters that adorn the gravestone

draw my name

but why do I see in the grave a silence that does not resemble me

(A silence) reading al-Fatiha?

---

Muhammad Harbi (born 1961) Egypt

Translated by Mohammad Salama

Source: World Literature Today