The Executioner: A Testimony in the Memory of Stone

My soul is tied up to an old column.
I recall, in the slumber of the night,
its stone history.
I run my hand over the fossilisation of time
on its cold body.
My hand collides with its protrusions.
These are letters I don’t read,
mute because of their shackles.
And this is the sound of birds that landed in a tree
and stared at a horizon that could not fly
after they were used to kiss its cloud
and touch the water of crops in its kingdom.
If only this cyanosed master
didn’t make its branches blighted,
didn’t smash its roses with his stick
and didn’t order the serf gang
to take colours from every lily
to plant their blood in the ground
and chronicle their demise
or write the biographies of those who were arrogant
from the beginning of the old era:

Oh stone, that
never destabilised history
nor listened to
kings’ cunning!
Oh cruel one, yes,
that blasts water that God willed
that these fields
desire its drops!
Would you whisper what hurt you?
Or be crueler than tyranny!
Would you speak out about their injustice
and about their salt that they threw into the eye
of this sun?
Could you count on fingers
or over the walls of strongholds
how many carnations they captured,
how many immature ears of wheat they burned,
how many folk songs they erased
from the heart of that who loved the country
but never visited its gardens,
how many gazes they drove away,
how many eyelids they forced their lashes
to resign,
how many winters they aborted and how many springs,
how many clouds they tied up:
“Go wherever you want,
for your tax will always return to me,”
and to my child whom I taught
to rob children of their dreams
and to my possessions of this land’s gold dust:
its sea, its ink, its wheat, its tillage, its plain, its hill,
its cold, its heat, its breeze, its sirocco, its death, its resurrection,
its east, its west, its silence, its loudness, its sleep and its wake!
I am king in everything
and I own everything.
I am the history teacher and I am the country
and its executioner
so always listen to me!
Oh executioner,
who wanders in his eternal sin!
Oh, you, who sees darkness
and dissipates at dawn its sublime source!
Oh, you, who were removed from our pages
like a curse that eyes refuse to see its letters!
Oh, you, who polluted the rains of the fields with coercion!
Oh, you, who terrified the children’s dream
and confused our time
and marked the seasons’ times with fear!
Here our hearts have aimed their sparks at you
and torrential rains threw you with hailstones!
So leave, accompanied with our screams and neighs
and the wailing of thousands of bereaved people!
Leave, stained with the blood of the fields’ roses
you executed!
Leave! History will spit you out
like a bitterness in the throat that is difficult to swallow
or a fly that mistakenly landed!
Leave! The country and its people will curse you
and clouds frown as you pass by
and the country’s children would scream when you appear:
This is who dimmed the stars
and threw ashes upon the country.
This is the one who stole the light
and water was contaminated with his poison.
This is who used to call himself
our Sultan,
but in the history book he is the country’s executioner.