Every Morning the War Gets Up from Sleep by Fadhil Al-Azzawi

Fadhil Al-Azzawi, Iraqi writer
who was jailed in the 1970s
now living in exile.
Mr. Al-Azzawi is an accomplished
novelist, poet, short story writer
living in Germany today.

Ah! This is Baghdad: I move through it every day, to and fro,
While I squat in this cold exile. I look for it
In the demonstrators who move along Rashid Street carrying banners,
In the strikes of textile workers,
To whom we throw bags of bread and political tracts.
At dawn, carrying paint, we spray the walls with our slogans:
"Down with Dictatorship!"
In the coffee-houses extending along the river on Abu Nawwas,
In the fishermen by the bridge,
In the monument of Jawad Selim which is riddled with bullets, 
In Majid’s coffeehouse, where the geniuses and informers sip tea,
Where a poet expelled from college gazes at a window
Behind which three Palestinian girls gaze down the street forever.

Ah! Every morning the war gets up from sleep.
So I place it in a poem, make the poem into a boat, which I throw into the Tigris. 

This is war, then.