Stranger on the bank, like the river . . . tied up to yourname by water. Nothing will bring me back from my free distance to my palm tree: not peace, nor war. Nothing will inscribe me in the Book of Testaments. Nothing, nothing glints off the shore of ebb and flow, between the Tigris and the Nile. Nothing gets me off the chariots of Pharaoh. Nothing carries me for a while, or makes me carry an idea: not promises, nor nostalgia. What am I to do, then? What am I to do without exile, without a long night staring at the water? Tied up to your name by water . . . Nothing takes me away from the butterfly of my dreams back into my present: not earth, nor fire. What am I to do, then, without the roses of Samarkand? What am I to do in a square that burnishes the chanters with moon-shaped stones? Lighter we both have become, like our homes in the distant winds. We have both become friends with the clouds' strange creatures; outside the reach of the gravity of the Land of Identity. What are we to do, then . . . What are we to do without exile, without a long night staring at the water? Tied up to your name by water . . . Nothing's left of me except for you; nothing's left of you except for me -- a stranger caressing his lover's thigh: O my stranger! What are we to do with what's left for us of the stillness, of the siesta that separates legend from legend? Nothing will carry us: not the road, nor home. Was this road the same from the start, or did our dreams find a mare among the horses of the Mongols on the hill, and trade us off? And what are we to do, then? What are we to do without exile?
Translated by Anton Shammas
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