close the gates of exile with assertions. On the contrary, they are left open,
acting as channels and openings that accommodate the increasingly powerful
will of the speaker:
Is this you, neighbor?
As if city streets
Are your threads, you, my coffin?
Hunting me
Hanging me
On a hospital window
From one exile to another
Closing in on me with darkness
These streets of cities that sleep with no stars
Isn’t there some mercy in your stony heart?
(2: 45)In other words, exile is no longer banishment in this book, for alienation takes
place in an esoteric fashion, to use Bettina L. Knapp’s formula, without neces-
sarily applying to al-Baymtl’s poetics as a whole. In Knapp’s explanation, this
exile “suggests a withdrawal on the part of individual from the empirical
realm.”^124 The nature of surveillance, represented by the neighbor, may suggest
counter connotations, but alienation exists because of alienating realities:
I was a stranger in my homeland and in exile
My healing wounds
Will open up again tomorrow
Interrogating me
Crucifying me
On window bars
O misery.^125Al-Baymtl’s masks enable the persona to develop an enormous matrix of exilic
poetics. Indeed, some of these are never specified, but al-Baymtlis on the
lookout for them, borrowing some, at times, from his contemporaries. Zayd
Ibn cAllwas,^126 for example, Adnnls’s favorite mask, and he soon became the
same for al-Baymtl. In his “Nubn’ah” (Prophecy), in Al-Kitmbah calmal-yln
(Writing on Clay 1970), al-Baymtlidentifies with Zayd Ibn cAllas the ulti-
mate image of martyrdom and regeneration. The act of spreading Zayd’s
ashes at dawn on the Euphrates’ waters made Zayd a symbol of the regenera-
tive process, inclusive, as it were, of the phoenix, and of Tammnz and
Christian myths of regeneration:
Silent, waiting for resurrection
For thousands of years,ENVISIONING EXILE