Rainsong

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By Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab

Your eyes are a forest of palms at dusk.

Or two balconies before the moon's departure.

When your eyes smile the vines bring forth leaves,

And the lights dance like the moon on the river,

Trembling under the oars, softly in the dusk,

As if stars are glittering in the depths...

And then sink in a cloud of transparent sorrow

Like the sea open-handed, cloaked by night,

With winter warmth and autumn's trembling;

Like birth and death, darkness and light.

My soul wakes to a tremulous weeping,

A wild rapture embracing the sky,

Like a child's ecstasy when he fears the moon,

As if the arches of clouds drink in the mist

And drop by drop it melts into rain.

The children shouting in the vineyards

And the stillness of sparrows in the trees tickled by

The rainsong...

Rain

Rain

Rain.

The evening yawns, while the clouds

Pour forth their heavy tears

Like a child who mutters before sleep

That his mother, whom he awoke a year ago,

And could not find, then asking after her was told

"She will come; after tomorrow"

Must come

Though his companions whisper among themselves

That she sleeps the sleep of the grave by the hillside,

Feeding on dust and drinking the rain.

It is as if a sorrowful fisherman gathers his nets,

Cursing the waters and his fate,

Strewing songs where the moon goes down.

Rain

Rain.

Do you know what sadness is brought by the rain?

And how the gutters weep when it pours down?

And how the lonely one feels lost

Without end -- like spilt blood, like the hungry,

Like love, like children, like death -- such is the rain.

Your eyes send me visions in the rain,

And across the Gulf waves the lightning transforms

The shores of Iraq into stars and seashells

As they are about to rise.

But the night draws on a cover of blood

And I cry to the Gulf: "O Gulf,

Giver of pearls, of seashells, of death!"

And the echo comes back

Like a sob:

"O Gulf,

Giver of seashells and death."

I can almost hear Iraq abound with thunder,

Storing up lightning in valleys and mountains

Until, when men broke its seal,

The wind left of Thamud

Not a trace in the valley.

I can hear the palm trees drinking the rain

And I can hear villages groan, the refugees

Wrestling with oars and with sails

Against the storms of the Gulf and the thunder, singing:

Rain

Rain

Rain.

And in Iraq there is hunger

And the harvest spreads the corn

To feed crows and locusts.

Only stones and rocks are ground

By millstones.

Rain

Rain

Rain.

What tears we shed on the day of departure,

And, fearing blame, we gave the rain as an excuse.

Rain

Rain.

And since we were children, the sky

Was overcast in winter,

And the rain poured.

And every year, when the earth is green, we starve.

Not a year has passed when Iraq had no hunger.

Rain

Rain

Rain.

In every drop of rain there lives

The red or yellow of the flower blooms.

In every tear of the hungry and the naked,

In every drop of the blood of slaves

There lives a smile waiting for a new mouth,

Or a breast rosy in the mouth of the newborn,

In the young world of tomorrow, the life giver.

Rain

Rain

Rain.

Iraq will be green with the rain.

I cry to the Gulf: "O Gulf,

Giver of pearls, of seashells, of death!"

And the echo comes back

Like a sob:

"O Gulf,

Giver of seashells and death."

And the Gulf strews forth, of its blessings

On the sands, the froth of waves, the seashells,

And what remains of a poor drowned man's bones

From among the refugees who drank of death

From the bottom of the Gulf.

And in Iraq there are a thousand vipers that drink the nectar

From flowers watered with

dew by the Euphrates.

And I hear the echo

Ringing in the Gulf:

"Rain

Rain

Rain.

In every drop of rain there lives

The red or yellow of the flower blooms.

In every tear of the hungry and the naked,

In every drop of the blood of slaves

There lives a smile waiting for a new mouth,

Or a breast rosy in the mouth of the newborn,

In the young world of tomorrow, the life giver."

And the rain pours down...

Translated by Mursi Saad El-Din