When We Grow Older
Poet: Anwar Alkhatib
Translator: Allison Blecker
When we grow older
we begin to observe the boring details of life:
The arrival of night faster than the day expects
The arrival of day slower than the night anticipates
Appointment-free mornings
The boredom of coffee with its smidgen of sugar
spilling over into its saucer
The similarity of flavors in food
The similarity of places
Our hatred for mirrors
Our indifference to the girls passing by
The similarity of all our limbs
When we grow older
we begin to suffer from a paucity of expectations:
We don’t expect a visitor, a relative, a beloved
nor a phone call from an old friend
We don’t expect new news
a new victory, nor a new defeat
For all that was going to happen has already come to pass
We don’t expect anything
We don’t expect that we will expect anything
Except what we already know and reject
Except that someone will inform us
we were found in the road, disoriented
or lost, or moving toward an idea unknown to us
which we know well
When we grow older we don’t wait for anyone
For the arrival of winter is a quandary,
the arrival of summer is a heavy burden
and the autumn leaves resemble us…and terrify us
All our waiting is for self-evident things:
Our sleeplessness in the totality of our breaths
Our ability to recall who is around us
The deeds to our land
The locations of our house keys
The ambush sites that count us
and rejoice when the crowd in our houses diminishes
When we grow older, we understand what it means that we have grown older
and those who lie in wait don’t understand
that whenever we grow older
they grow younger in our eyes
August 2009