Analysis of Bread, Hashish And Moon.
Nizar Qabbani 1923 (Damascus) – 1998 (London)
When the moon is born in the east,
And the white rooftops drift asleep
Under the heaped-up light,
People leave their shops and march forth in groups
To meet the moon
Carrying bread, and a radio, to the mountaintops,
And their narcotics.
There they buy and sell fantasies
And images,
And die, as the moon comes to life.
What does that luminous disc
Do to my homeland?
The land of the prophets,
The land of the simple,
The chewers of tobacco, the dealers in drug?
What does the moon do to us,
That we squander our valor
And live only to beg from Heaven?
What has the heaven
For the lazy and the weak?
When the moon comes to life they are changed to
corpses,
And shake the tombs of the saints,
Hoping to be granted some rice, some children...
They spread out their fine and elegant rugs,
And console themselves with an opium we call fate
And destiny.
In my land, the land of the simple
What weakness and decay
Lay hold of us, when the light streams forth!
Rugs, thousands of baskets,
Glasses of tea and children swarn over the hills.
In my land,
where the simple weep,
And live in the light they cannot perceive;
In my land,
Where people live without eyes,
And pray,
And fornicate,
And live in resignation,
As they always have,
Calling on the crescent moon:
" O Crescent Moon!
O suspended God of Marble!
O unbelievable object!
Always you have been for the east, for us,
A cluster of diamonds,
For the millions whose senses are numbed"
On those eastern nights when
The moon waxes full,
The east divests itself of all honor
And vigor.
The millions who go barefoot,
Who believe in four wives
And the day of judgment;
The millions who encounter bread
Only in their dreams;
Who spend the night in houses
Built of coughs;
Who have never set eyes on medicine;
Fall down like corpses beneath the light.
In my land,
where the stupid weep
And die weeping
Whenever the crescent moon appears
And their tears increase;
Whenever some wretched lute moves them...
or the song to "night"
In my land,
In the land of the simple,
where we slowly chew on our unending songs
A form of consumption destroying the east
Our east chewing on its history,
its lethargic dreams,
Its empty legends,
Our east that sees the sum of all heroism
In Picaresque Abu Zayd al Hilali.
Scheme | abcxdxxxexxfghxijkkxxexkxxlhmxgxFbxFxmakxddhxinx xxjjxxxxoexkc FbxxxxcFhxalonxh |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111001 0011101 100111 1011101101 1101 100100101010 01010 11101100 0100 01101111 1111001 1111 011010 011010 01010101001 1101111 11101010 011011110 11010 1010001 1011111111 10 0101101 10111011110 1111101001 0100111100111 0100 011011010 110001 111110111 110110 101101011001 011 10101 0100111001 011 1101011 01 01 010010 1111 1010101 1101 10101110 1010010 111110111 010110 101011011 111011 01101 0101011110 010 010111 101011 001110 01010101 10011 1101010 111 1110111100 111100101 011 10101 0110 010010101 01101 010110111 10111 011 0011010 111011100101 01101001001 1011011100 10101 11010 101110111100 0110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,173 |
Words | 413 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 48, 13, 16 |
Lines Amount | 77 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 587 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 137 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:03 min read
- 12 Views
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"Bread, Hashish And Moon." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56272/bread%2C-hashish-and-moon.>.
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