Di’bil Ibn Ali’l-Khuzai

 

Di’bil Ibn Ali’l-Khuzai (765-860/861?)

was a poet’s poet––

                like Gregory Corso––

always ready to slander men of merit,

sparing none,

 

not even the khalifs.

 

He was deaf & deformed,

yet because of him,

Mohammed is thought

to have learned sign language

 

in order to discuss his Poets of Baghdad.

 

Di’bil’s conduct was sometimes eccentric––

one day he saw a man in a fit of epilepsy,

went up & shouted in his ear

as loud as he could the word Di’bil,

 

(tall camel).

 

The man rose up

 

& walked away

As if nothing had happened.

 

 

10 February 2003

 

 

[Published in Quien Sabe Mountain:

Poems 1998-2004. © 2004 by Jim Cohn.]