“The Eye of the Sun” disappear too, leaving him in utter despair, “weeping
in the river of loneliness and the times of strangers”:^135
I destroyed my life
In all the exiles of the world
Searching for Lmrmand Khuzmmm.
(Ibid. 2: 302, 304)The poem, the phoenixPerhaps more than any among his poems, al-Baymtl’s “Al-cArm’” (Open Air or
Wilderness) in his Mamlakat al-sunbulah(Kingdom of Grain 1979) sums up
the complexity, density, and diversity of his poetics of exile. In this poem,
banishment and alienation act upon the speaker. The latter is obsessed with
banishment, as it occupies his dreams and nightmares, pursuing him day and
night. His isolation is real, an endless recurrence with no termination or con-
clusion in sight. His suffering is perpetual, and his self-castigation is enor-
mous. However, identification with the phoenix counteracts this pressure and
achieves some release through Sufi longing and yearning. Throughout, Sufi
texts and the whole exilic subtext work not only as a counter force to dislodge
the power of isolation, but also as a homeland of enunciations and words.
Indeed, in exchange of roles, the poem emerges out of this intersection as the
very phoenix in its perpetual renewal. The poet does not deny the howling
wolf inside him, nor does he overlook “the death of dawn on the sidewalks of
earthy cities,” but the poem is his only homeland, his power, and personal
presence after fusing the self into the larger one. In “Al-‘Arm’ ” (Wilderness),
he says in the prose poem section:
So, here you are, by yourself, filled with alienation in this world,
departing at night from the gate of dawn, searching for the one you
have seen in your dreams, trying to go beyond the horizon by your-
self, returning with the nightmares of a dead day, to begin anew,
to carry this rock to the top, every morning you hang yourself,
but the phoenix comes back with the fire of poetry to clean from you
the ashes of things, for your love remains your sealed treasure, while
you are yearning with desire, awaiting and possessed by banishment,
you bleed words, you a prince of exile, who rapes the world with
words.
(Works 2: 439)While the last image only betrays al-Baymtl’s desexualized world, its other
image points to regeneration, albeit illegitimate and rebellious. Indeed,
al-Baymtl’s rebirths are never clear-cut, and the haziness keeps his phoenix
depicting a process rather than sounding a triumphant note. This ambiguity
ENVISIONING EXILE