Jerusalem (قدس)

By Ameer Hamad (tr. Gabrielle Alvarez)

I never loved you

I chase my heart in your alleyways

before it finds the path that had led

to Damascus

I chase it before it reaches the tracks in the museum

To stitch its arteries with smoke

You are a city drunk with sand in its mirror

whose threshold is made of penumbra

whose very stones blow trumpets

guiding the soldiers

I never loved you

I chase my heart in your alleyways

and find it in the well of my grandfather’s shop

playing with bullets thrown by your devotees

when you opened with a red lock of hair

your bedroom door to the invaders.