The malice of desires feeds the power of my imagination – Poems by Mubeen Kishany

A Black Swan

 

Staring at the news
lends me the wisdom of a shepherd sitting on a hill
as he watches his sheep cowering

at the smell of wolf in the grass.

Then he beats the ground with his staff,
calling the lowly creatures from the abyss

and giving them permission to watch a cheap copy

of hell.

In its crumpled old age, the world has made me oblivious

to the danger of being twenty years old

hostage to four expanding walls

my soul keeps shrinking and fading away

The shell I made of my sleep

feeds my mother’s dread that I’ll become

the fifth wall

that brings down the weak foundations of our home

as they are beaten by the blind hand of secret family wars.

It is the malice of desires

that feeds the power of my imagination

and adds a capacity for dreaming

to the list of rarities.

The dream becomes a black swan

swimming in the fog

So I glance at it sideways

scolding and reproachful.

This staring at the unseen

lends me the kind of wisdom

that lets you feel

the stuffiness of the air

breathed day after day

by us, the worn out and weary.

 

 

A truth in the mouth of the mute

 

How can I persuade a bird landing by my window

that its wings curtail the horizon?

I am silent in the face of this distraction

imprisoned behind its oblivion

and the shortcomings of my gaze.

I keep on there like a pendulum

pacing back and forth

in a room choked with my anxiety.

I glance at the closed window

Where a bird loses its luster.

In my wandering

I’m not afraid of doors

yet I fear that once they are shut

they’ll block that ray of light

like a truth in the mouth of the mute.

What ordeal is this?

To be the secret and its opposite

as the grievousness of your mistakes chases your name

turning you into a devil that is mute.

 

The perplexed pharmacy

 

O water of the past, in you I seek shelter

the days have dried up

and wounded dust has risen to the faces.

I run in the streams of hearts

to remove their rust

and spread your flowers on shaking nerves.

I move among the names for pain

and erase them.

Because, if hurt,

the abyss in the soul

will never be filled with the cotton of memories,

life becomes an indomitable artery

in front of the perplexed pharmacy.

I run from the hearts of mothers

towards the desolation of limbs

and soften their roughness

to flow into the lamps of cordiality to set them alight

illuminating the darkness of closed off senses

oblivious to love’s ability to burst into flames

as Narcissus sows distractions at every turn

promising to extinguish love’s joy

like a fragment of a lost ring.

 

Mubeen Kishany, Iraqi poet and artist, was born in 1998 and has an Engineering degree. The translated poems are from a collection entitled “Restless”  which has won the prestigious al-Rafidain award as a debut collection. He is one of the founders of Maska magazine. His poems are translated into Italian, Persian and English.