another. /It was my destiny to travel between deaths.”^41 The opening works
in space, for its site recalls the deserted encampment of ancient poetry and the
marmthlof cities:
When Beirut was gasping in my arms
like a stabbed fish,
a call came from Damascus:
“Your mother has died.”
At first, I did not comprehend the words.
How the fish could be dying everywhere
at the same time?
The beloved city, Beirut,
the amazing mother, Fa’iza...
(Ibid. 113)Although drawn as pieces of recollections addressed to a public that has no
idea of a mother who was not “engaged in... public relations,” the poem also
carries no signs of fertility and vegetation. The stark scene has no consolation,
and the speaker feels unprotected and forlorn: “you shall find me roaming the
streets, naked” (Ibid. 114). On another occasion, Qabbmnldedicated an elegy
to the memory of the Egyptian and Arab leader Jamml ‘Abd Nmxir (d. 1970).
The poem laments the loss of the Egyptian leader within a different context.
It is the nation that betrays the leader, the nation that relinquishes hope and
dallies in empty slogans. The poem creates its text through words of love for
the lost leader, but no less than two portions of the poem thrive on the blame
and the biting criticism of a society that includes the speaker:
We have killed you, last of the prophets,
you are dead! It is not new,
this killing of prophets and saints.
How many an imam has been murdered
as he performed his evening prayers!
(Ibid. 153)The gap between the leader and the nation is huge, and his thought is
inaccessible to a stubborn people. The poet looks on nationalist ideology as a
virgin land that demands commitment and faith that do not exist:
You came to us, a beautiful book
We didn’t know how to read,
You invited us to the land of innocence
But we refused to follow.
(Ibid.)CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS