Translated by
Ferial Ghazoul and John Verlenden
1. from The Sun’s Eye
Child of the sun’s eye
Raise your bronze forearm
And take tomorrow’s dawn
Raise your rose-crowned head
And strike the strings of the lyric
In this world no strings fear the human
Touch so strongly.
Child of new day
Day born in yesterday’s wound
Wield your father’s hammer
Crack the barriers of history-corrupt.
Are you wounded in the street?
So long as your pens are strong
Refusing to walk a road
Backward,
So long as your iron is hot,
Then hammer away,
Maul your chains into a knife
And plant it--O Child—
Into the eye
That fears your sun.
2. Alphabet of the Arab Twentieth Century: Alif
The issue differs,
The alphabet we live in is new
We write not on water
But draw blood stanzas.
The intrepid poet admits.
He dips his quill in wounds,
Wrestles with wind,
Suffers the long journey.
The new poet in our new time differs,
The question, O Comrade, differs,
The issue differs.
3. You are the Music, I am the Dance
Forbidden dance
In the sweeping vales
I
undulate
You
My music
Plants swell
Alongside me
A storm arises
The nipple of youth
Sighs
All in my step
Walking not on earth
Flying not in air
I
The dance
You
The music.
4. All of Them
They all said there’s no use
They said I’m leaning on the sun’s dust
My beloved
Before whose tree
I stand is unapproachable
They said I am mad
For placing myself
In the volcano’s lap singing
They said that salty mountain never
Dispenses a jot of wine
They said it’s impossible
To dance on one leg
She will not succumb to such invitations
They said your night party takes place with no lights
They said
They said
All of them said
Then arrived at the party
On-time
The lot of them
5. I Don’t Bow Down
Standing in the wind’s ice, naked
Alone like the letter alif
I do not bow down
I revolt against all gods
And do not bow down
I escape fire, enter its double
But do not bow down
The intersection of contradictions
I believe in it
And do not bow down
I mix myself up with ashes
But do not bow down
Except to you.
6. With More Freedom
Freely I set up relations
With words
In the inkpot
Of your delectable inferno
I dip my quills
And write
You were first to read
My bleeding
From your lap I was yanked
They proscribed my pens, papers
They parted me from books
From your warmth (which made my words
Glimmer)
My fingers
On their own --in the cell’s darkness—
Sought out luminous roads
Leading to the Word
I stopped needing pens, papers,
I read and embraced my comrades’ hearts
I established relations with the horizon
When I am at sea or in the sahara
In stony jungle
Or in the special state
Poetry cannot depart
The poet needs but true yearning
And the gushing begins
Nor can you be taken away
Your yearning stirs like a light
Within these words
7. Adventure
Let me steal beneath your robes
Just once
I will not scratch your ivory
Heaped up like treasure
I know you --
Diaphanous like a butterfly’s wing --
So let me enter once
Where the warmth of coffee
Makes the nocturnal soiree
Sweeter yet
Just once
I will be the polite child
Watchful of decorum’s limits
Here is how it will be
I will enter from the lip of the collar
But how will I get out?
I would not want to.
8. The Intimate Inferno
Winter Desert Solitude
Cactus…
Night Silence
Everyone descending the deep wells of sleep…
Equipped with dreams
I wander night’s forests
Limbs exhausted
Shrieking like a lost plucked seagull
Longing so much for rest
Letters Words Splinters
Phantasms Flashes on the pillow
Comrades on the move from unfinished dreams
Entering a dream yet to begin
Still I can’t subside
Like a crazy swinging wave…
On the foot of a foolish giant
Still I can’t subside
Paradiso mingling with Inferno in my fervent scream
Still I can’t subside
In the morning the comrades stir
They find in my bed the sick body
And the poem
That breeds life
9. Illumination
In the captured calm
Of the cameleer’s song
While tribes venture
Onto verdant days
I, spent in proud despair,
Squat in my captivity
Forgetting, remembering,
Forgetting
10. Earth’s Mantle
Who will collect the tears and confer them to the mother
Her son’s absence tries her
She goes into the street veil-less
Casts about for tears sufficient to cover the earth
Let her have her tears
Let her have relief so she can bear
Her son’s wandering.
11. History
Those who were:
were once.
12. Agape Feast
My table is open to passersby
To vagabonds, Negroes, rejectionists, dervishes, thieves
Sufis, Karmithians, pirates
And those who question who doubt
And those whose swords know no cases but chests
Swords that came from God
To God returning.
13. A Dynasty
His mother said:
You descended from a man who mixed the sea with iron
Carried you toys from the sea
Where the sea star becomes a seahorse
And from blood comes ink and writing
He who gazed at the sand
Lost in thought, captivated,
Conferred on you rings, seals, and helmets
He did not get tired
The iron got tired of him as did the waves, the elements.
You descended from all that. Where will you go now?
I shall wander, O mother
I dream of becoming the poet
Mixing the elements and quaking him
Juxtaposing them harmonizing
Building crowded bridges
No room for anyone on them.
O Mother,
When will I become a poet when
I have children and a wife who tells them:
You descended from a man who mixes nipples
With night visions
14. Memory of All That
They can forbid coffee, apertures, and notebooks
The can fence the trees, the river, the legends
They can pack the forests
In jars and belts
They can block the roads
Of both mail and bees.
These graceful shores
They can turn into graveyards, parking lots for spiders
Their clutches roam freely among the wind,
The mausoleum, and the parade.
They can do all that
But we cannot forget
That they have done all that.
15. The Stars’ Messenger
The banners crowded the horizon
Leaning, plunging forward
Purple seeping from them
Their verdure embracing the sand
The camel-litters shaking, seductive
A treasure house crowded with gifts
I saw the banners when lightning was their roof
Rippling as at the wedding parade
It might have been the wine
The shy maidens covering their breasts
With young men’s chests and shouting
The earth was frenzied
The banners washed by clouds
At heaven’s gate
Banners in the insomnia of creation
What? I asked
A martyr marrying the earth,
This -- his commemoration.
16. Queens’ Isolation [The Isolation of Queens]
Standing on the sidewalk, waiting for a person
Or a thing
I don’t know him, he does not know me
He comes from behind
Stabs me in the back
No motivation
Before I breathe my last dream
I entreat him not to tell a soul.
If my life has been an open game
At least my death should remain a puzzle
This is the way I desire to die
The Dream Chapter
Vol. I: 475
O fourth impossible
Take pity on me
Become
Genesis
Quivering, this earth.
Where can I put down my foot?
The Charmed
He lights the house’s lone candle,
Opens the door to the nocturnal room,
His gift from the ancestors.
His first foot pressing forward,
He penetrates the lampless space,
Veers with his witness-candle,
Seeking out the dark.
The candle expires, he lights it,
Expires again, he lights it.
Matchsticks low, he cannot find the dark.
The Citadel
This citadel
I build around me
stone by stone
summon
enemy armies
exhort them to fight
with appetite, with valor
with excellence in aiming
should they require grounds
to hone their weapons
I prepare them
I bait them with challenges
wait alone in my citadel
call every onslaught a seductive apple
no good at wars I detest weapons
own neither soldiers nor messengers
when they begin to retreat
I aid their wounded
send away war prisoners armed with gifts
build back the battered walls
paint them, decorate them
with lanterns
to guide their next attack
who knows? Perhaps at night
by myself I remain
so too the citadel.
Catalog of Suffering
(1)
Taking off to translate the night...
(2)
If there is a lust within language, could we speak of it as the text’s flesh? Its body?
(3)
Are you crying
for a nation? Or is
a nation crying for you?
Who are you?
You soaked the people with a teary elegy,
your desert girded with chieftains --
who are you?
Categorizing heavens with alarmed eyes,
uplifting our enemies with silence…
who are you?
(4)
Around him speech splinters,
mobilizes into battalions,
sets up, draws borders,
starts paralleling, pulling away,
surpassing, pouring out, the
primary text reduced to marginalia, footnotes
soon to be fire’s lust.
None of this bothers him.
He’s convinced he is the Text.
(10)
Flesh that dies with each desire,
born again with news of a ceasefire
between two deaths.
Flesh held taut, secure, by dykes,
inspected by passion,
I postponed the moment for your sake
using a pretext of manuscripts.
But here finally the body is going off to war,
no alphabet enough.
(11)
Hail, guardian of wine, peace be with you.
You go on about the history of grapes, then forget both grapes
and wine.
You bestow the ecstatic sway to our bodies.
When evening proceeds aflame
and the oil of our lamps is about to run dry,
you -- in no genteel fashion -- pour
an able-bodied vintage into bottles.
Lo, flames quit their slumber,
light flares to announce night’s defeat.
(12)
Isolated, far away,
I examine the spirit’s appeal,
the flesh’s alchemy…
Arrives a voice racked with desire, refuting
physics,
a child who, inventing a dream,
slips into it.
(14)
What is hidden,
alarms.
(17)
I happened upon assassins-at-play
counting sacrificial victims in the ash of night,
praising God, denouncing the sins of Man.
Some of them un-tether the alphabet, spell names,
like scars on a corpse attacking the people.
Some repeat the number of victims
And their equivalence in earned pain.
Some honored themselves
hoping to deny death,
others stand captured within grave stupidity.
(22)
Only the sun
can imitate a sun.
(23)
As for you,
go ahead, feign sleep,
lose evening’s appetite.
Only now you start shaking,
your eyes fixed upon the captivated beings
escaping into our dreams.
(25)
What a hairy little genie you are, Lady!
You enjoy testing the most taut and proud of veins
while touching your hidden treasure,
ascending in suppressed sighs.
Why perch on a throne of haughtiness,
leaving your lover unattended,
trembling whenever he mentions a queen
who heaps up silver in the large, wooden bowl
of the body,
playing with gold gushing beneath her balcony?
(27)
They keep their braziers toasty.
You have only to thrust in your cold iron
to be properly skewered.
(29)
They call her ‘genie queen’,
having slipped herself into a human robe.
Lifting the cloak over her head, she exchanges one nature
for another, her body
emerging from its night.
(30)
He was told:
You’re being deceived, you lonely wolf.
Someone’s meddling with your book,
tamping salt in the wound.
pushing you around
between illusion and dream.
He was told:
best gather your fragments
unto your fragmented self,
decorate your den with cozy loneliness,
luxurious solitude.
He was told:
get back to the cave’s heart –
it holds more mercy for you
than love’s illusion.
He was told:
go find yourself.
That way you’ll be sure no one can spoil your self
for you.
There...back to where you’re alone,
go.
An impossible dream is kinder
than a rampaging ghost.
(32)
Alone,
within the night of the text,
creatures ooze into the howdah
of language.
He invents precious stones,
polished by sculptors
keeping vigil
on this discourse
of the text’s flesh.
(33)
I saw in you the hidden paradise,
something water-like in your chemise;
a queen offering compassion to shepherds
in order to assault her subjects.
(34)
A crystal paradise.
Life outside it
is paradise.
(35)
Look, woman, my sobs like frightened lava
fly from my body.
Assert valor and wisdom
to believe in a day when
death can arrive with the calm
of grass
bleeding mud,
chance’s ambiguity.
No time exists for you
to see where love lies
in life or in death.
(36)
Man, your child will beget children
who will sculpt a name for the body
and polish it with metals—
a body that neither ages nor weakens.
But wait! It’s impaired, sick, perishing.
The spirit continues roving within groaning
bones. When the man dies,
hear the thump of the spirit
moving upward,
sounding like gold shattering
beneath the hooves of time.
Your child will beget children:
know that coming from books,
to books they will depart.
(37)
A child left alone at home
screams his throat dry -- no one hears.
From the window a cloud covers him,
he stops his wailing, starts arranging pillows.
Night falls, dreams await him.
They weave a path from silken curtains
to distant depths.
Night descending, dreams awaiting.
(38)
A jungle,
or human beings?
Faces -- eyes swaying
in the glass of space--
joy,
or a misery?
(39)
It was said that it is a body.
It was said that it is the inheritance of ancestors
overflowing to the ends of the sea,
ancestors saving a heritage that dams up the blood.
Also said: it is the ancient stone
gushing forth in glass polished
by suspirations:
a body writing one body,
read by another body.
(40)
My insides ached for you,
my blood craved you,
my heart is weeping like the planets.
(60)
His lust for mirrors tapers off,
quicksilver-chatter proving a bore.
(61)
For her, his version of life:
“Sliver of light betwixt two nights.”
(65)
Here is a book for you,
read to you.
(111)
Gold’s memory bequeaths to iron
the secrets of alchemy
and advises forgetting the future.
(112)
He described the night saying:
Life filled with justifications
for regret,
if it were to recur
I would not flee
would not spare a single regret.
(114)
Alarmed, he fell back, alone, to the cave,
sobbing:
“That which is love they call
Slaying.”
(119)
To the speech of a rock
ablaze beside the abyss,
in rapture
I listen.
(121)
A mountain goat—wind defeating his horns--
makes light
of a mountain rock.
(122)
He told life about death:
“Confront the world.
At the same time
show it your back.”
(125)
They race,
his end
and the text’s last word:
What will our progeny do
with this manuscript of hope,
this unfinished book?
(129)
I came.
I came
and no one
was there.
(134)
Grudges flourish
when the hugs
are most tight.
(138)
Whenever he opens a book
he reads another name into his name,
shared by dictionaries
he will one day
be owned by lexicons.
(139)
He retires,
renounces war.
Still it comes
always it comes.
(140)
He bade farewell to friends
dying with a grudge
once the sirens of sleep
caught up with his soul.
(142)
I have died from time to time.
(143)
I master no map,
am neither traveler nor resident,
places are so many chains
tightened,
polished by my comings
and goings.
(145)
He who rubbed his two wrists
on night’s rock—
how can he forget?
(146)
With words he furnishes the grave,
as a man
might sing
wedding songs
to himself.
(147)
To see the text with his heart
he shuts his eyes
as if praying:
“O Death...
my Beloved”
(149)
No death
just absence
persisting.
(150)
People fear in me
ugliness made manifest
while, in them, I shrink
from the latent.
(151)
Worn to near-nothing,
he sleeps beneath his skin
like a sheet
stretched
to accommodate dreams.
(152)
Just opening a window onto water
sets my language on fire
like a chemise weeping for a body.
(154)
I moved my soul from the body
to the margin
of the text
and prepared it for possible
absence
as if the book
would grant me
its ranging fire.
(155)
He says to us (but more to himself):
“The loser loses nothing.”
(158)
Forgetting does not suffice:
Not possible
to reclaim them.
(160)
Time for the author
to grant the text
its desires
time for the soul to expire.
From Qassim Haddad, Al-'Amal al-Shi'riyya (Poetic Works). 2 vol. Beirut: Al-Mu'sasa al''Arabiyya lil-Dirasat wal-Nashr, 2000. "Akhbar Majunun Layla" vol. II, pp. 181-254
American University in Cairo, December 2012
These translations were made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA). Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.