combination. Author and text join forces, and they are the same. In Nuxnx
sharqiyyah(Oriental Texts 1999), text 23 reiterates:
I am confronting now the jury of history
So notice my heart
How gravediggers have been digging us a grave
But we, in the taverns of the world
Have been creating a kingdom of poetry
We have been in love with the gods of myth
Making fires at the top of the Himalayas
Vowing in Bmb al-Shaykh sacrificial gifts^102
To the infallible imam of the poor^103“Nuxnxsharqiyyah” (Oriental Texts), which gives the title to the whole
collection, is meant to survey and capture al-Baymtl’s career as poet. In that
career, a notable change takes place in his collection Al-Nmr wa- al-kalimmt
(Fire and Words 1964). Although the poet is the addresser throughout, there
is a tendency to argue for the poem as the inventory and the trail, capturing
an experience of variety and defiance. In “Al->arf al-cm’id” (The Returning
Word), the poet interrogates his personal art. He plays with rhythms,
rhymes, and words, and uses “thousands of swords” for his duels, but “the
returning poet still roams / the ship is lost” (1: 414). The mixture of recol-
lection and the present experience in exile work together, and exile is
accepted as displacement, which can, nevertheless, accommodate his wounds,
that is, memories:
You word
That taught me to fare in the seas
My Sindbad was murdered in a fire boat
My homeland is exile
And my exile for the dear ones is home
The face of my mother I always see through the wall
Her face and the children’s
And the lamps in our street which won over the daylight
Your word, soaked in blood,
You the exiled
I carry Baghdad in my heart from one home to another.^104Fused into each other, the letter, the poem, and the speaker are the same. So
are the tissues of creativity and commitment. While settling for this
exchange, the poem of exile has another commitment, as advanced in
“Tammat al-lucbah” (The Trick is Done/The Game is Over) in his Al-Nmr wa-
al-kalimmt(Fire and Words 1964). The poem wanders and roams around, not
the speaker. Protesting censorship back home, the poet speaks of the poem as
ENVISIONING EXILE