Tilting Towards Windmills
Perhaps there are many ways to parse a dream?
As I tilt towards it, the windmill tilts at me.
I have seen many things to make unicorns wonder
In a strangely horsey idiom. I have been a stranger
To a language in which I might have been stronger –
Speaking in a pidgin that wilts as much as it can
Before the dangerous logic of a better, farther man.
And to speak of danger, one begins to understand
The oneness of many things one didn’t, ever.
In oneness I began. In oneness: far more clever than
The serried spine that held me in this place.
And there was a sign of danger spelt across the face,
Younger than I’ll ever be, stronger than I’ll ever –
And the gesture was a lingo, jesting and ingenious.
And yet, you find me here again, propped inside
The house of myself: a house where nothing hides.
And perhaps it’s been a merely latent wish,
The decision to be, waking, but woken, fresh?
Sincerely, then. Let us curry up the ghosts
Of those who’ve loved and hated, hated most.
Let us be quick with what the silver says
While the gold was sleeping, a glumly-sunken ray.
Sun and moon are hackneyed tropes.
They speak in the language of most, brilliant builders
Of brilliant hope. Was it silly of me to see, to learn by rote
The way windmills tilt forever, soaped by youth
And whatever else is meant by a lack of use –
The hangman of the earth, vivid with its childhood?
We live between the boasts of these: good extremes –
The death of the man and the death of his dream.
Omar Sabbagh
Omar Sabbagh is a widely-published poet, writer, critic and, betimes, scholar. Among his books are Via Negativa: a parable of exile, a Beirut novella (and his first full-length fiction) published with Liquorice Fish Books in 2016; and To The Middle of Love, his fourth collection of poetry, published with Cinnamon Press in 2017. He was Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut from 2011-13. He now teaches at the American University in Dubai (AUD).