Nothing

Reading from Southbank Centre’s Poetry Parnassus festival, 2012.

Translated from  the Arabic by Sarah Maguire and Atef Alshaer for The Poetry Translation Centre.

Nothing

Before you start reading,
put down your pen:
consider the ink,
how it comprehends bleeding

Learn
from the distant horizon
and from the narrowing eyes
the expansiveness of vision
and the treachery of hands

Do not blame me – do not blame anyone –
if you die before you read on
before blood is understood