Sometimes Wisdom Possesses Me

The light is self-obsessed
on the ceiling, in corners, on the table.
Pleasure has brought them to the edge of sleep.
Of course, this is not my voice.
Someone is singing
behind the black curtain that I lean on for support.

If I look down
I will see worms fleeing the floor
and climbing my nakedness.
I won’t pay any attention to how I look
so that no one else will.

The men talk of the nation's future,
the wives help the lady of the house,
the cat sits facing a feast of garbage,
and the spiders on the ceiling
make no fuss.

It seems the family's children liked me.
After I gave them a paper boat
I failed to convince them
that the copper tub they filled with water
is not a sea.

"Then a heavy silence prevailed."
Those Bedouins
knew early on that words fly
and cannot be weighed down.

And for other reasons
I did not hear a revolutionary speak
except to defend his old revolution
to a new set of silent listeners.

Prophets are quiet by necessity
as they get closer
to the one who sent them.

The difficulty was not in closing their mouths,
but in where to place their hands
when there’s nothing to say.

One day wisdom will possess me
and I will not go to the party.
I will have marked the onset of my freedom
with the moment
I became no longer indebted to your ears.