Oranges | A translation of Iman Mersal by Khaled Mattawa

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On the highest step

I am naked under a light mist.

I lose you

and wake in another bed.

To believe that there is always something greater

than propriety,

I examine my skin

on which no imprint of the past remains—

I see I am getting thinner

as if preparing myself

to fly.

~

I don’t think it was on the rural road that passes by my family home

or the street filled with the cafés of the elite

in the middle of the capital . . .

The fires subsided before I woke up.

There are no corpses.

They must have disintegrated with the old pictures and cups

along with the closed, half-closed, and open windows.

You stand before me in your clothes, clean to the point of cruelty.

I smell you

and realize that the feet that trampled the earth

did not deprive you of your own scent.

You offer me a basket of oranges

with the smile of a sailor who had just docked.

I remind you that I do not like them:

—These are not oranges, my love.

I think the world has ended

and our teeth can no longer chew on such hard things.

So we begin to use the oranges as pool balls.

Cosmic rubble

can be remade into a cue,

and a table with a smooth top

and six pockets

with equal distances between them.

~

Laid out in a casket too wide for my body . . .

the flowers they fling at me

do not compel my nails to scratch my skin raw.

You stand by my feet.

I do not recall any association between you and them.

You are still taller than I

and that can be enough to renew my grudge.

Apparently, they have stuffed what’s between my thighs with white cotton,

and this reveals the classic error

of limiting our fears to castration anxiety.

I caught you once at the height of ecstasy

while I watched my own heart beat

and ran toward the opposite sidewalk.

The desire I failed to conjure up

explodes now in a blind spot.

For you

I sweep neutrality off my face

and dab on some lust with a little touch-up.

The casket is wide enough for us both.

I doubt your sadness.

You are still standing on your feet,

elegant,

and I, sadly enough, have no plans

to die before you.