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Amjad Nasser

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Loneliness 1

At night
When walls start to breathe
And steam rises from the concrete
Between the fingers and under the nostrils;
When
We search for wrinkled faces,
And cracked hands;
When
We shout into boxes shut tight,
When
The echo does not come back;
When
We raise our hands,
And a shadow doesn’t fall;
When
No one knocks on the door,
And no one passes under the window;
When
We don’t hear the sound of the woodworm in the wardrobe,
Or the howling of love in adjacent rooms;
When we rush to desks and drawers
And find no pictures of the family;
When
We look for a revolver
A knife
Or a noose
And find nothing except the plaster on the wall
Cracking in absolute silence;
We search for our names
And do not remember them;
When
All this happens
At night
In a box shut tight
What do we do?

[Nicosia, July 1984]

Translated by Ibrahim Muhawi

Page(s) 211-212

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