Letter to al-Mutanabbi

You were right

Your words are still wings of light

always carrying you to us

sometimes carrying us to you

Your name is a green tattoo

on Baghdad’s tired face

Your street the forehead

of a body beheaded every morning

Just another chapter

in the saga of blood and ink

you knew so well

I cannot lie to you

I’m quite pessimistic

we are still etching

the walls of this cave

thousands of years long

with signs we keep reinterpreting

and myths about a future world

where we don’t devour one another

where the sun is friendly

and the seas cannot inherit our fever

Some are digging

a deeper grave

about to embrace us all

they, too, have their engravings,

maps, philosophers, and books

We can only keep dreaming

of a shore for the wind

and dig wells

in the dark

with fingernails of silence and solitude

we will weave an ocean out of ink

for our myths

and out of words a sail

or a shroud

vast enough for all.

Every book is a well

around which we sit

drinking to your health

trying to live

as you did

with death and after it

Al-Mutanabbi (10th century) was one of the greatest classical Arab poets. Al-Mutanabbi Street, in the heart of old Baghdad, is the cultural center of the city with tens of bookshops and stalls and the famous Shahbandar café where the literati congregated every Friday. On March 5th 2007, a bomb exploded, killing twenty-six civilians and destroying many of the bookshops.