with imagination. It is not surprising that poets are desperately in need of
beautifulmoments to punctuate their recollections. Without these, imagina-
tion loses its main springs of spontaneity, flow, and ease.
Admitting loss of homeland, symbolized by female beauty and love, the
Iraqi exile ‘Abd al-Wahhmb al-Baymtlpours out his fear of creative aridity and
drought in paradoxical images. However, his images usually make sense
through a gradual discernment of traces and patterns. The world at large
lacks feeling: “No one knows another in this exile / All are alone. / The
world’s heart is made of stone / In this kingdom of exile.”^69 To be in a hard-
hearted universe also involves the speaker in gloomy meditations that occupy
a self already ridden with doubt. In his poem, “I am Born and Burnt in Love,”
al-Baymtlrecognizes his despair and fear of further losses: “In untilled, murky
fields I grope / my way / Seeking night guards to help me stop / This blind
rapacious love—/ This black light in my memory” (Ibid.).
Lara and cM’ishmare al-Baymtl’s symbols for creativity, poetry, and home-
land. The three are so intertwined that estrangement from each involves the
poet in a simulacrum of “murdered love / —An incurable wound / And a
deadly yearning” that keeps him always in anxiety and disarray: “Madly run-
ning he weeps / Years of exile and torment / Of unrequited search and / rest-
less travels.”^70 Fear of poetic drought under the impact of alienation and
disenchantment makes the sense of exile more tormenting. For Ovid, writing
is inevitable regardless of quality: “I write. It doesn’t make / any difference
whether it’s good or not, / and I have no idea any more, myself” (Slavitt 25).
Although claiming indifference, the poet actually betrays anxiety, fear, and
suspicions of failure for not communicating in the right place and time. In
the Lebanese Khalll >mwl’s (d. 1982) “Al-Kahf” (The Cave) the speaker
recognizes with horror the possibility of dwindling into “a tattered rag”:
Shame strips my folded cave
Naked in its exile;
And shall I call for one
Who may work wonders yet?
The great magician died
And he will not return.What is left of the poet as a creator of marvels is a bundle of formless shapes
moving aimlessly here and there:
From the magician’s corpse
A tattered rag somehow
Evaporates. It grows:
Some sprightly form sets forth
Unfurled and chased along
From road to wayward road.^71ENVISIONING EXILE