Amjad Nasser

A Song and Three Questions

I.Talk is silver,poetry is gold,

and women are the ringing of both metals.

Poems will be our songs from now on.

Let’s start then without borrowings or embellishments

and look at the living things between us with an eye for praise.

Let the song celebrate our contentedness

and those joys only shepherds know,

whose song and the smell of their armpits

have spread among goat paths and scrub grass

and who have disappeared never to return.

II.Shall we blow into a silver trumpet?

But how can shepherds live without songs

and sheep and desires?

No, we’ll sing,

How could there be shepherds without horses and violins

and wounds that never heal?

III.Talk is silver,poetry is gold,

and women are the ringing of both metals.

Poetry will be our songs from now on.

Let’s dedicate themto those who will never return,

to the shepherds of freckled dawns,

to the chants dressed in wedding clothes,

to the women who loved the fiercest stags

and who preferred the Eros of copper,

spring grasses and buried wells,

falcons and night predators and the tiger of Arabia,

cymbals, bayonets, skiffs and saddles,

studded with the blood of the tribes,

the shouts of young lads yet to learn how to

tame their mares,and the flight of whole tribes from open country

pulling hard at iron bits.
And even further than that—

broken flutes and hollow bones will surprise us with three questions:

How much time has passed?

Have the old wounds healed?

What names are still in use?

How do we answer?

Will it be enough to say,

Talk is silver, poetry is gold

and women are the ringing of both metals

and poetry will be our language from now on?

Fellow shepherds, let’s dig into our bowls filled to the brim.

Let us begin our chants.