Three Intentions

I will cry to regret

and slaughter my heart

on a desolate rock in the steppe

and run in the wilderness run

in their illusions in the mirrors

of bullets while shooing

victory and defeat

and also the dead

with war's twig

I will arch my back like a noble wolf

and howl in the plains

until the plains go mad

and the god of soldiers spots me lifeless

in war's meanness

I'd be pleased yet angry

and forlorn of seas that have tolled

for thirty centuries

they come and go

I call to my friend

and leave him standing in speech

I call to my lover

and leave her insomniac

Copyright Credit: Ghassan Zaqtan, "Three Intentions" from The Silence that Remains: Selected Poems 1982-2003. Copyright © 2017 by Ghassan Zaqtan. Translated by Fady Joudah. Translation copyright © 2017 by Fady Joudah. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.