EVERYONE TAKES THEIR TURN 

AT BEING NOAH

Poem for Today - Thursday - September 18, 2014

THE NEW NOAH

We travel in the ark with our God-promised oars,

alive under the rain

and mud, while others die.

We travel with the waves, and the dead

are strung across the horizon; we link our lives

to theirs. Between us

and the sky is a window to pray from:

`O God, why did you save us alone

of all people and creatures?

Where will you send us—to your other land?

To our own country

and the leaves of death, the wind of life?

O God, in our veins we fear the sun,

we despair of the light; we dread a tomorrow

where life must be started all over again.'

We travel in the ark with our God-promised oars,

and under the rain

mud embraces the eyes of others.

In mud they have perished, while we are saved

from the deluge: the seeds remaining

in this bowl that turns, or does not turn.

`Had we never become the seed

of creation, for the earth and its generations—

had we never been dust

or cinders, but remained in some limbo

we would never have had to see the world, its hell

and its God, twice.

O God, put us to death with all the other creatures.

We long to be what we are not, long to be

dust. Do not give us life!'

If time rolls back to the beginning

and water immerses the face of life again,

if the universe trembles and God hastens to ask me:

'Noah, save the living!' I will not heed His words.

I will come in my ark with a poet

and a free rebel;

we shall travel together

careless of God's words.

We will open our hearts to the flood,

dive in the mud and strip pebbles

and clay from the eyes of the floating;

we will whisper in their veins that

we have made the ascent,

emerged from the cave,

and changed the course of time.

We have not bent our sails to fear

or listened to God's words.

Death is our rendezvous, and our shores

a familiar despair; we have accepted

its icy sea, its new waters;

we have crossed and reached its end.

Heedless of that God,

we long for a new one.

(Spring 1958)

© Adonis (‘Aku Ahnad Sa’id) [1930- ],

pages 160-161, in

When the Words Burn,

An Anthology of

Modern Arabic Poetry: 1945-1987,

translated by John Mikhail Asfour

Painting on top by J. M. W. Turner,
We  saw this at the Tate Museum in
London - just two weeks ago 
at  a special  exhibition
entitled, "The EY Exhibition,
Late Turner, Painting Set Free".
The title of this painting is,
Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) –
 The Morning after the Deluge –
Moses Writing the Book of Genesis - 
exhibited in 1843 for the first time.