LETTER TO THE MOTHER
" Mother died today "
So many times I wished I had written these words To never see you or hear you again
Abandoned at birth
I never ceased looking for you
My greatest torture was finding you
Recognizing you
Walking by your side
Walking behind you
Before you
And in you
Thirty - five years Thirty - five years
I spent seeking you finding you avoiding you
Ever since that damned day when you spat me out
You haven't stopped hiding
Yet you are everywhere at all times
Ever present behind and around
Ever facing :
The Mediterranean
This Mediterranean that I crossed many times
Testing our umbilical cord to the point of breaking
And here I am once more
Like metal filings at the mercy of a magnet
Drafting these lines under your watchful eye
The rare times when you seemed to hear my whining
Your answer was always : " It was the war "
This war that explains all
From my doubts to your wanderings and your amnesia
All the way to contemporary art !
Because of you I fancied killing a hundred times
I regret not doing it with every break of day
For all things practical I prayed as a child
I asked baby Jesus for protection
To keep us safe
Both and from each other
Today not Jesus nor Mary and Joseph not even Allah or his Prophet - albeit almighty Listen any more
You are old and ugly
Your bones crushed under the weight of your wrinkles
Yet you grow young tenaciously
Under scalpels and petrodollars
Time outlasts us mortals
While You remain here unblinking and in flux
Waiting with the impatience of a suckling
To bury us all
And march on our corpses
With concrete shoes
You infanticidal monster
Whose children will never follow the hearse
Despite it all I sometimes think I love you
Despite it all I love you I do I love you despite it all
I love you as one would love his wife his daughter his friend his sister
I love you as one would love his own mother
Person from the city in shadow: AND I HATe You More THAN SATAN HATES GOD , YOU WHORE OF A CITY !
MAZen - Beit 2010
