Damascus, What Are You Doing To Me? Poem Rhyme Scheme

Recent Interactions*

This poem was read 56 times,

This poem was added to the favorite list by 0 members,

This poem was voted by 0 members.

(* Interactions only in the last 7 days)

New Poems

Wonderful Women
by Umaru Kanneh Boima
Freedom To Scratch In Peace
by Olute Aete
Happy New Year
by Felix Menda
Human Beings
by Dana Graslie
Lust
by Wisdom Greatness
An Isolated Tree's Song
by Sayeed Abubakar
A Strange Boy
by Sayeed Abubakar
O Soil
by Sayeed Abubakar
No War, No War-monger
by Sayeed Abubakar
Night's Town
by Sayeed Abubakar

Popular Poets

1. Emily Dickinson(2414 poems)
2. Madison Julius Cawein(1231 poems)
3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox(1136 poems)
4. William Wordsworth(1016 poems)
5. Robert Burns(986 poems)
6. Edgar Albert Guest(945 poems)
7. Thomas Moore(849 poems)
8. Robert Service(831 poems)

Nizar Qabbani

Damascus, What Are You Doing To Me? Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Write your comment about Damascus, What Are You Doing To Me? poem by Nizar Qabbani

Recent Interactions*

New Poems

Popular Poets

	A
My voice rings out this time from Damascus	B
It rings out from the house of my mother and father	C
In Sham The geography of my body changes	D
The cells of my blood become green	E
My alphabet is green	E
In Sham A new mouth emerges for my mouth	F
A new voice emerges for my voice	G
And my fingers	H
Become a tribe	I
	-
	-
I return to Damascus	B
Riding on the backs of clouds	J
Riding the two most beautiful horses in the world	K
The horse of passion	L
The horse of poetry	M
I return after sixty years	N
To search for my umbilical cord	O
For the Damascene barber who circumcised me	M
For the midwife who tossed me in the basin under the bed	P
And received a gold lira from my father	C
She left our house	Q
On that day in March of	R
Her hands stained with the blood of the poem	S
	-
	-
I return to the womb in which I was formed	T
To the first book I read in it	U
To the first woman who taught me	M
The geography of love	R
And the geography of women	L
	-
	-
I return	V
After my limbs have been strewn across all the continents	W
And my cough has been scattered in all the hotels	X
After my mother s sheets scented with laurel soap	Y
I have found no other bed to sleep on	Z
And after the bride of oil and thyme	A2
That she would roll up for me	M
No longer does any other 'bride' in the world please me	M
And after the quince jam she would make with her own hands	B2
I am no longer enthusiastic about breakfast in the morning	C2
And after the blackberry drink that she would make	D2
No other wine intoxicates me	M
	-
	-
I enter the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque	E2
And greet everyone in it	U
Corner to corner	C
Tile to tile	F2
Dove to dove	R
I wander in the gardens of Kufi script	G2
And pluck beautiful flowers of God s words	H2
And hear with my eye the voice of the mosaics	I2
And the music of agate prayer beads	J2
A state of revelation and rapture overtakes me	M
So I climb the steps of the first minaret that encounters me	M
Calling	C2
Come to the jasmine	L
Come to the jasmine	L
	-
	-
Returning to you	K2
Stained by the rains of my longing	C2
Returning to fill my pockets	L2
With nuts green plums and green almonds	M2
Returning to my oyster shell	N2
Returning to my birth bed	P
For the fountains of Versailles	O2
Are no compensation for the Fountain Caf	R
And Les Halles in Paris	P2
Is no compensation for the Friday market	Q2
And Buckingham Palace in London	L
Is no compensation for Azem Palace	B
And the pigeons of San Marco in Venice	B
Are no more blessed than the doves in the Umayyad Mosque	E2
And Napoleon s tomb in Les Invalides	B
Is no more glorious than the tomb of Salah al Din Al Ayyubi	I
	-
	-
I wander in the narrow alleys of Damascus	B
Behind the windows honeyed eyes awake	D2
And greet me	M
The stars wear their gold bracelets	B
And greet me	M
And the pigeons alight from their towers	B
And greet me	M
And the clean Shami cats come out	R2
Who were born with us	B
Grew up with us	B
And married with us	B
To greet me	M
	-
	-
I immerse myself in the Buzurriya Souq	D2
Set a sail in a cloud of spices	B
Clouds of cloves	B
And cinnamon	L
And camomile	N2
I perform ablutions in rose water once	B
And in the water of passion many times	B
And I forget while in the Souq al Attarine	L
All the concoctions of Nina Ricci	M
And Coco Chanel	N2
What are you doing to me Damascus	B
How have you changed my culture My aesthetic taste	S2
For I have been made to forget the ringing of cups of licorice	B
The piano concerto of Rachmaninoff	R
How do the gardens of Sham transform me	M
For I have become the first conductor in the world	K
That leads an orchestra from a willow tree	M
	-
	-
I have come to you	K2
From the history of the Damascene rose	B
That condenses the history of perfume	T2
From the memory of al Mutanabbi	I
That condenses the history of poetry	M
I have come to you	K2
From the blossoms of bitter orange	U2
And the dahlia	N2
And the narcissus	B
And the 'nice boy'	I
That first taught me drawing	D2
I have come to you	K2
From the laughter of Shami women	L
That first taught me music	D2
And the beginning of adolesence	B
From the spouts of our alley	M
That first taught me crying	D2
And from my mother s prayer rug	D2
That first taught me	M
The path to God	V2
	-
	-
I open the drawers of memory	M
One then another	C
I remember my father	C
Coming out of his workshop on Mu awiya Alley	M
I remember the horse drawn carts	B
And the sellers of prickly pears	B
And the caf s of al Rubwa	W2
That nearly after five flasks of araq	D2
Fall into the river	C
I remember the colored towels	B
As they dance on the door of Hammam al Khayyatin	L
As if they were celebrating their national holiday	X2
I remember the Damascene houses	B
With their copper doorknobs	B
And their ceilings decorated with glazed tiles	B
And their interior courtyards	B
That remind you of descriptions of heaven	L
	-
	-
The Damascene House	B
Is beyond the architectural text	Y2
The design of our homes	B
Is based on an emotional foundation	L
For every house leans on the hip of another	C
And every balcony	L
Extends its hand to another facing it	U
Damascene houses are loving houses	B
They greet one another in the morning	D2
And exchange visits	B
Secretly at night	Z2
	-
	-
When I was a diplomat in Britain	L
Thirty years ago	D2
My mother would send letters at the beginning of Spring	D2
Inside each letter	C
A bundle of tarragon	L
And when the English suspected my letters	B
They took them to the laboratory	L
And turned them over to Scotland Yard	A3
And explosives experts	B
And when they grew weary of me and my tarragon	L
They would ask Tell us by god	V2
What is the name of this magical herb that has made us dizzy	L
Is it a talisman	L
Medicine	L
A secret code	B3
What is it called in English	B
I said to them It s difficult for me to explain	L
For tarragon is a language that only the gardens of Sham speak	D2
It is our sacred herb	I
Our perfumed eloquence	B
And if your great poet Shakespeare had known of tarragon	L
His plays would have been better	C
In brief	R
My mother is a wonderful woman she loves me greatly	L
And whenever she missed me	L
She would send me a bunch of tarragon	L
Because for her tarragon is the emotional equivalent	C3
To the words my darling	D2
And when the English didn t understand one word of my poetic argument	C3
They gave me back my tarragon and closed the investigation	L
	-
	-
From Khan Asad Basha	N2
Abu Khalil al Qabbani emerges	B
In his damask robe	I
And his brocaded turban	L
And his eyes haunted with questions	B
Like Hamlet s	B
He attempts to present an avant garde play	X2
But they demand Karagoz s tent	D3
He tries to present a text from Shakespeare	E3
They ask him about the news of al Zir	E3
He tries to find a single female voice	B
To sing with him	F3
Oh That of Sham	G3
They load up their Ottoman rifles	B
And fire into every rose tree	E3
That sings professionally	E3
He tries to find a single woman	L
To repeat after him	F3
Oh bird of birds oh dove	R
They unsheathe their knives	B
And slaughter all the descendents of doves	B
And all the descendents of women	L
After a hundred years	B
Damascus apologized to Abu Khalil al Qabbani	L
And they erected a magnificent theater in his name	H3
	-
	-
I put on the jubbah of Muhyi al Din Ibn al Arabi	I
I descend from the peak of Mt Qassiun	L
Carrying for the children of the city	E3
Peaches	B
Pomegranates	B
And sesame halawa	W2
And for its women	L
Necklaces of turquoise	B
And poems of love	R
I enter	E3
A long tunnel of sparrows	B
Gillyflowers	B
Hibiscus	B
Clustered jasmine	L
And I enter the questions of perfume	T2
And my schoolbag is lost from me	E3
And the copper lunch case	B
In which I used to carry my food	I3
And the blue beads	B
That my mother used to hang on my chest	J3
So People of Sham	G3
He among you who find	K3