A Song and the Sultan by Mahmoud Darwish

A Song and the Sultan

It was no more than the description of a burst of rain 

and handkerchiefs of lightning which burned the secret of trees— 

then why did they resist her? 

When she said that something different from this water 

runs in the river 

and the people of the shore are statues and other things, 

why did they torture her? 

When she told them the forest was abounding with secrets 

and the moon was stabbed with a carving knife 

and the blood of the nightingale was on that stone, abandoned, 

why did they resist her? 

Why did they torture her? 

When she said, my country is a mountain of sweat 

and on the small bridge a man is dying 

and darkness burning 

the Sultan was angry 

and the Sultan is an imaginative creature. 

He said, “The fault is in the mirror 

so let your singer be silent 

and let my kingdom from the Nile to the Euphrates be.” 

and he shouted, “Put that poem in prison!” 

The torture room, for security, 

is a thousand times better than an anthem or a newspaper. 

Go and tell the Sultan 

that the wind cannot be wounded by the shake of a sword 

that millions of trees can become green 

in the cupped hand of a single letter. 

But the Sultan was angry, and the Sultan is everywhere 

on stamps, in psalms, 

and on his forehead is the tattoo of hunting. 

He shouted, “It is ordered! 

Execute this poem!” 

Execution Square is the best anthology for obstinate sons. 

Go and tell the Sultan 

that lightning cannot be imprisoned in a corncob 

that songs are the logic of the sun 

and the history of sheaves 

and the nature of earthquakes. 

That songs like tree trunks may die in one land 

but sprout in every country 

The blue sun was an idea 

the Sultan tried to submerge 

but it became the birthday of an ember 

and the red sun has become an ember 

which the Sultan in vain imprisoned 

and suddenly the fire 

is a revolution! 

The voices of blood 

have taken the tone of a tempest 

and the pebbles of the Square are becoming 

like open wounds 

and I laugh, awed by the birth of the wind. 

When the Sultan resisted me 

I grasped the key of the morning 

and groped my way with the lamps of wounds. 

Oh how wise I was when I gave my heart 

to the call of the tempest! 

Let the tempest roar, 

O let the tempest roar . . . !

(Translated by Rose Styron)