The ICORN-relay—Mazen Maarouf
The guest writer-relay has reached Iceland. The poet Mazen Maarouf—who has lived all his life as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon—was during 2011 granted sanctuary in Reykjavík through the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). Maarouf is a strong advocate of pacifism and his outspoken views against regimes that use violence created a dangerous situation for him. He received so many death threats that he once again had to flee.
Complaining
I throw my heart in the air
Heads
Or tails
I try by myself to guess:
My eyelid cannot be the edge of a balcony …
And this sparrow landing on the handle of the door
The handle made of an old rib
Just a confusion
The tale is open on the page of hope
And I am there
Opening my hands widely
Spreading my ten fingers like pins
To fix me down on the page
Which
Whenever my thumb
Gets close to turn it over
I see its shadow
I thought it was an apple
Falling from the sleeve of one of the genies who live above
And it would hit my head and soak the tale with blood.
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A Noble Mafia Man
I wonder around
In the gutter of life
Carrying my memory like an old canvas bag
Dropping angels
I collected them in the past..
Leaving my lips in a metal cup
Like a dead log
For an old man
And I am a sparrow made of straw
Dreaming of a fish,
But the fat lorry
Which carries tears
Running
Down my cheek another time
Without brakes.
The cockroach I gave him two days
To die
He lied down hours ago on his back
Lifting his head a little bit
Towards the sky.
Maybe he wanted to whisper something to the angels
I will carry him in the air
Fascinated
By my giant size next to his
After that
I hang him on the back of that lorry
With a kiss
To his lover
And I come back
Like a noble mafia man
Just finished off his enemies
And dreaming now
of the fish
.......................................................................................
Chlorophyll
The wood, which was used
Without love
To make wings of planes
And windows,
That wood
Inhabited by the spirits of hundreds of birds
From when it was part of a tree,
They clung to it,
While contemplating the skin of their little babies
And thinking
The leaves, which protect me from the wind …
Are late …
The wood of that window
Knows
That there are feathers beneath its bark,
That someday
It will be able to steal
Out of these squares
Designed for it
And then it will fly high
Wiping away the sweat of workers from its skin
Boasting
In front of children waiting for their school bus
That its origin was
A group of sparrows
ICORN
The International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) is an association of cities around the world dedicated to the value of Freedom of Expression. Writers have consistently been targets of politically motivated threats and persecution, and the network believes it is necessary for the international community to formulate and implement an appropriate response. Each ICORN city focuses on one writer at a time, each writer representing the countless others in hiding, in prison or silenced forever.
