able to create. Hikmet’s “pot of honey” is the poem that interacts with
al-Baymtl’s poetry. The latter writes:
Take my steed
The drops of rain clinging to my hair
The sunflower that presses her cheek in mine
Take the memories of the childhood of my love
My books, my death
My voice will remain, a lamp
At the door of God.
(Ibid.)With such a transfiguration “My life slipped through my hands, it became
a form,”^108 poetry interchanges with a godly lamp, like Hikmet’s “hands full
of sun,”^109 offering light and warmth in lieu of his rebellion of many forms.
Working within a broad subtext of love and faring freely among images of
exiles and Sufis, al-Baymtldevelops a strategy that counteracts any anxiety of
influence. He familiarizes himself with the vocation itself, and identifies
with its prominent figures like Lorca, Hikmet, and Neruda, or Ibn cArabland
al->allmj, before delving into the matrix of their poetry, to appropriate and
retain their images. He himself articulates the argument as follows:
The language of myth
Lives in the axe of the woodcutter, penetrating deep into
The virgin forests of language
Why did the legendary woodcutter king depart?^110The rhetorical question draws attention to the artificiality of a large number
of poems in the traditional and contemporary canon that he satirizes and
attacks. Their authors are like inquisitors, the advocates of a hegemonic
discourse, which his al-Macarrl(d. 1058 CE) has already identified in his
poetry and in his Rismlat al-ghufrmn(Epistle of Forgiveness). Al-Baymtl’s
elegies and poetic reconstructions of al-Macarrl, al-Mutanabbl, Hikmet, and
Lorca in Al-Nmr wa- al-kalimmt(Fire and Words 1964) and Sifr al-fuqr wa al-
thawrah(The Book of Poverty and Revolution 1965) should draw our atten-
tion to dislocation, alienation, and exile as major themes that cut across their
poetry, and allow al-Baymtlto navigate easily among their texts. Al-Baymtl’s
fear of poetic drought drives him to criticize traditionalists and their like
among the modernists who present the image he detests and fears. Hikmet
also charges such authors as enemies. “Enter a house where there is a plague,”
he says, “but do not take one step across a threshold where there is an agent
provocateur. And if your hand accidentally touches his, wash it seven times.
And I will tear up my only holiday shirt and give it to you for a towel.”^111
The poet indirectly offers an image of his alienation among a large group of
ENVISIONING EXILE