May be you’ll find it.
And if you do,
you’ll let go of it
at the end of the night.
(Ibid.)The resort to prose in the following part is not a lapse into metonymy, for the
speaker identifies with ancestors in moments of loss and search for a way out.
His al-Mutanabbl(d. 965) is not the luminous ancestor, not the one whom
we meet in Adnnls’ “Desert.” “What is it that touched al-Mutanabbi / Other
than this soil that felt his tread? He betrayed many things, / But not his
vision.”^17 Sa‘dlYnsuf’s al-Mutanabblis a shattered one who may be no less
bewildered than the speaker, but who also emerges as an ambivalent poet,
amid “jewelers” and artists. The speaker’s eye locates an analogy in the
Algerian rug, between black and green, an analogy that reflects on his own
experience as recollection, reading and material reality imprint a stamp of
indecision on the poem.
Finally he remembered al-Mutanabbi, an old myopic poet, standing
in the sand looking for his lost ring. There are jewellers in the world,
and there are artists. On the Algerian rug black is balanced with red.
Between them is the color of ash. And the yellow... why? The
yellow. Jaune! Jaune!Arthur Rimbaud or Tristan Tzara? Oh, how close
yellow is to green! Only the sea. Camus used to love the yellowness of
the wheat fields facing the sea near Tibaza...Tibaza, ah Tibaza!
(Ibid.)No matter how invigorating recollection may be, the real leaves its stamp of
loss, as the speaker holds on to the image of the gray with its connotations of
death in loneliness and exile.
Gray Hair May Look Black in Old Age
Such is my case, a withered man at fifty
Who squats in his room, occupied with lies and cigarettes.
Who will return milk teeth to the toothless man?
Or youth to the gray-haired?
Who can fill this empty head?
But gray hair may look black in old age
and a lie may hold the truth
and cigarette smoke grows into clouds for a raining sky
and in his toothless gums milk teeth may grow.
But it is true, too, that an old man at fifty may fall
dead in his room
dressed in lies and smoke.POETIC DIALOGIZATION