Waiting in Marion
Abdulkhalik Kitan
Translated by Mohammed Hamoud
Here in this remote spot
Every night, I learn to be patient
Nights melt one after the other…
While my feet become addicted to trembling
Wary of drunks
And troublesome figures
I don’t want what I learn
It simply doesn’t suit me
To pass the long hours, I have nothing but useless contemplations
Since they are like that…
I have a growing longing
My father had learned the lingo I’m learning now
He memorised the lesson well
They pulled him from under the car… half dead
That’s how he spent thirty years after that
Prolonging his silence and not smoking
Waiting in Marion today…
Is no different from waiting in Dijla Street fifty years ago…
Faces are different here, and so is the strange tongue
The same waiting
I sit behind the steering wheel with my innovative form of patience
Like an old cleric I utter many prayers to bring in livelihood
In the passenger seat beside me sits my father
And in the rear seat sit dispersed friends
It’s not easy for a sane person to live like this
Perhaps for this poetry and music were created
I look in the rear-view mirror to see poetry slipping away…
And in the side mirror…
I see a gathering of violins surrounding it…
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