THE RECOIL FROM ROMANTICISM 238To the faces that harden behind a mask of gloom
I bow, and to streets where I left behind my tears.
To a father who died, green as a cloud
With a sail on his face, I bow.
And to a child that is sold
In order to pray and be a bootblack
(In our land we all pray and are bootblacks).
To a stone I inscribed with my hunger
Saying it was lightning and rain, drops rolling under my eyelids,
And to a house whose dust I carried with me in my loss
I bow — all these are my homeland, not Damascus, (i ,45 3)While prose poetry is used very sparingly indeed in Songs of Mihyar (only
in the so-called psalms introducing the sections of the collection and in the
last section where it is interwoven with the new and freer form of verse), in
The Book of Metamorphosis and Migration in the Regions of Day and Night (1965)
very large sections are written in prose poetry. Here Adunis's mystical pan-
theistic experience grows hi depth, and the fluidity of the universe, the
Heraclitus-like vision, is more pronounced as the poet portrays a world in
which things become their opposites. As the poet's wife, the distinguished
critic Khalida Sa'id, says in a statement quoted on the dustjacket of the first
edition, 'This is the poetry of a journey in the continents of the ulterior where
the self is in a constant mystical night journey moving to and fro between
the regions of the body and those of the soul.' Yet, although Adunis even
here does not lose sight of his people and their plight (see, for instance, his
passionate lines on Damascus (n,52— 3)), there is no doubt that he is now
moving to a much more solipsistic universe and that his language is becoming
increasingly obscure. Here is a short poem which may give the reader some
idea of the original, 'The Tree of Fire':
A family of leaves.
Sitting beside a water spring,
Wound this earth of tears,
Reading aloud to the water from the book of fire.
My family did not wait for my coming.
They went, and now there is
Neither trace nor fire. (n,18)Clearly, after Songs of Mihyar, which represents the peak of his poetic
creativity, Adunis's poetry has become increasingly cerebral.
In The Stage and the Mirrors the form is much freer: it even contains brief
dramatic scenes. Here Adunis seems to be more interested in external issues
such as the relation between the poet and the powers-that-be. For instance,
'Taimur and Mihyar' deals with the problem of the poet versus authority. In