Still

  Still you turn out lives 
  in dribs and drabs, lives 
  of no return 
  no news 
  of doom, no snakes that scale 
  the walls of certainty—
  and then you produce 
  the lives of geniuses and infants. 
  I still can engage you 
  in a faceless argument 
  of politics and the economy 
  that upends the facts, only 
  to collapse. And why is it 
  that you retreat 
  when I wish to thank you 
  and discuss your plans? 
  The blueprints 
  formed inside your head 
  are not made to human measure 
  so that 
  I am forced to cut and paste 
  cut and paste until 
  the collage becomes a home. 
  Forgiveness—no one’s 
  compelled to seek it 
  but it is preferable to setting traps 
  in the brain’s underbrush 
  baited with our flesh. 
 
 

  an excerpt from Fields of My Blood
  © 1998 John Asfour

Born in Aitaneat, Lebanon, poet, translator, scholar and teacher John Asfour was blinded at the age of fourteen by a grenade which exploded in his face outside his village, during the Civil War of 1958. Both the rich cultural heritage and sectarian violence of his homeland have profoundly  shaped Asfour’s life. He is the author of three volumes of poetry, including the critically acclaimed One Fish from the Rooftop (Cormorant Books, 1990). 

He edited the landmark anthology, When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945-1987, the first major collection of its kind ever to appear in Canada. In 1996, in recognition of his poetic  achievements, Asfour received the Canada Council’s Joseph Stauffer Prize. Asfour, currently president of the Canadian-Arab Federation, resides in Montreal, Quebec, with his wife, Alison, and two children.

Links

Interview With Elaine Kalman Naves

The Special Senate Committee on Bill C-36