Carrying my death along with me
A vagrant, with no food and water,
Whenever the Euphrates changes direction
My soul, settling down there as the stones, with
Euphrates mud and grass.
(Ibid. 2: 187)Debating redemptive and regenerative poeticsIn his poem “al-cArrmf al-acmm” (The Blind Fortuneteller), the second in
Al-Kitmbah calmal-yln(Writing on Clay), the image of the vagrant poet
is repeated, but there is now a specific expectation of a redeeming touch or
kiss, be it from Scheherazade or cM’ishah in her many faces. Al-Baymtl
identifies with the legendary and historical heroes only by default, for the
wanderer–poet never assumes a heroic posture. There must be somebody else
to carry the burden, “I am searching in this great crowd...for the legendary
historical hero who can change this holy mud and this straw into
flame...into revolution” al-Baymtlwrites.^127
To intertwine in a poetic matrix of an exilic nature does not entail physical
survival, for the elegiac poet borrows from Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”
to implicate the wind in a regenerative process. Death is not a terminus,
“Death is a new birth, a new coming.” Thus, the exilic space is equivalent to
Shelley’s seeds in winter. The poet “comes back from exile, with birds and
clouds” (Works 1: 474). Nevertheless, fluctuation is the norm in al-Baymtl’s
poetics of exile. Even when love is drawn upon in association with the
Andalusian element in his poetry, as whenever Lorca is recalled, there is
always a counter challenge. The wanderer is so entangled at crossroads that
certainty is elusive: “Roads of infatuation deserted me / and paths are tired of
me,” he says in “Qaxm’id .ubb ’ilm‘Ishtmr” (Poems of Love to Ishtar; Works
2: 193–94).
Although aligned with forces of progress and change, al-Baymtlnever
settles for a final poetic faith in the manner of his Tammnzlcounterparts.
Indeed, exile plays so much of a role in questioning settlements and tales of
legendary closures that a reader must be on the alert whenever a seemingly
regenerative address is advanced. In “The Descent of Orpheus to the
Underworld,” in the collection Al-Kitmbah calmal-yln(Writing on Clay), the
persona leaves behind benedictions and prayers, not merely to identify with
Orpheus, but also to let him suffer interrogation:
Why are you in exile, with death and autumn leaves?
Wearing their rags, resurrected in every age
Searching in a heap of straw for a needle, feverish, cast away
With a crown of thorns and slippers of snow.
(Ibid. 2: 195)ENVISIONING EXILE