identify with the displaced and the uprooted, gains power through the
layering of textual and formulaic association and recapitulation.
It is interesting to note how contrafaction works in respect to this poem when
a poet like Ma.mnd Darwlsh engages it after June 1967, emphasizing a counter
memory, not a nostalgic recollection of a past, for cities and places are alive and
“we exist in the flesh of our country.”^25 Revoking the nostalgic mood as one of
loss, the poet uses rhetorical affirmation to displace whatever that betrays weak-
ness and frailty. Yet, rhetoric cannot sustain a position for long, and Ma.mnd
Darwlsh will soon search for other strategies to enforce a textual homeland.
Al-Sayymb’s “Canticle of the Rain” (1954) approached loss differently.
Writing when Iraq was still under British domination and when the puppet
regime and the corrupt system caused havoc, Al-Sayymb used a traditional
opening, not that of a ruined abode, but of a departing female. While she may
share with the traditional poem its evoked mistress or beloved, there is no
further association of luxury or ease. Memory and recollection act neverthe-
less with no less force in perpetuating the poetic process. In this, al-Sayymb is
drawn to the normative qaxldahopening, which, in Suzanne P. Stetkeyvch’s
words, becomes the “focal point in the process of poetic composition” (The
Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 26). Its naslbthreshold deludes the reader and leads
him or her to think in terms of normalcy before being thrown into a counter
ri.lahof migration and exodus, where the river and the sea, not the desert, lead
to the third division of the hymn, as the poet invokes change and revolution
against a corrupt system. A comparison between Imru’ al-Qays’ mu‘allaqah
and al-Sayymb’s canticle may be worthwhile to demonstrate the difference
between the old and the new. The pre-Islamic poet begins as follows:
Stop! To weep over the memory of a beloved
And the ruin of the house of the beloved
In the soft sand, that ripples
Between al-Dakhnl and >awmal
As far as Tn,l.and al-Miqrmt.
Here, in the sand, traces are still visible
Between the well-worn paths.
What sand the north wind pours over the ruins
The south wind scatters when it blows.
And in the empty, ruined courtyard
The spoor of the white gazelle
Lies like peppercorns.
On the morning of departure,
While they loaded the caravan in the acacia grove,
I wept uncontrollably;
My anguish and longing for my loved one
Were as sharp as the tears shed
By those who grind the bitter apple seed.^26CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS