Funnel 40/2, Inhalt - Fulbright-Kommission

Excerpt from the poem
the 200-plus poems of Mihyar, working
always under the mentorship of C.K.
Williams. A final manuscript should be
ready by the end of the summer (2004),
and then begins the process of finding a
publisher for our book.
The project, more difficult and timeconsuming
than I could have ever imagined
at its outset last June, has been an
immensely rewarding one. I was fortunate
enough to be offered a Fulbright Enterprise
Scholarship to do research under Professor
Dr. Jochen Hörisch at the University of
Mannheim. Not only has the Enterprise
Scholarship provided me with the time and
resources needed for my project, it has also
given me the opportunity to study under
Professor Hörisch, one of Germany’s leading
scholars. I have been in Mannheim
since September of 2003, and have been
centering my research here on the German
thinkers that have had the greatest influence
on Adonis: Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Rilke and Hölderlin, among others. It has
been an incredible year thus far and is getting
better all the time.
“The New Noah”
from Songs of Mihyar the Damascene
If time could start anew,
And water flood the face of life,
And the earth tremble and god hasten
To tell me “Noah, save all living creatures
For us,” I would not heed the words of god,
I’d depart in my ark, I’d banish the pebbles
And the clay from the sockets of the dead,
I’d expose their depths to the flood,
I’d whisper in their veins, tell them
That we have returned from the desert,
Emerged from the cave
And transformed the sky of years, tell them
That we embark without bowing to dismay,
Without heeding the words of god,
Our appointment is death, and our shores
Are despair, death’s intimate,
And we accept it
Like a sea, icy with the irons of the waters
DEPARTMENTS 11
We are crossing, striving toward its outer limit,
We depart without heeding that god,
We long for a different lord, a new lord.
Copyright © Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Ivan Eubanks, 2004.
THE FUNNEL • VOLUME 40 • NUMBER 2 • SUMMER 2004