The drowned remained in their bottled dimness and the moon drifted on its course. The ironed djellabas also kept waiting for their lives which the hunt had taken to a gathering dusty with preys. And the crow who with his eyes had bled a feather that neglected to place a horse in the grassy landscape couldn’t find a new trick for landing on trees or even just a colour that can still muffle the sound of falling leaves in a hall filled with shadows. No one came to their aid
They didn’t exchange the half-words with which to wet the camels’ glances and nothing else happened as well.
Because they just waited for all that time until they were dead. • Translated by Sargon Boulus زاوية مائلة، محمد الحارثي At a slant angle, by Mohamed Al-Harthi You were not the meanings’ cohort or its opposite, but between two doors you paced with half-words, you scaled the roof of dream with the fabled adventure, stalked the arm and cane that became a road, as evening fell in the elegies and the mirrors.
Nor were you alone as you went down the slope of your life where you weren’t alone. your hand lit the candles of air, the dawn’s photograph wove the morning haze with a sleepy needle and a morningless woman’s lock of hair in the immense mirror that reflects the same image with a slanting angle at the end of the slope you never understood was your life itself hung at the entrance to paradise. • Translated by Sargon Boulus فِراشنا القديم، عبد الله الريامي Our Old Bed, by Abdullah Al-Riyami I wait for you in a bright shadow lit by matches struck from the tree under whose branches we said goodbye When you arrive fluids purl along my veins the way clouds arise from the sea And I stumble between your thighs towards the cure for this unstaunchable wound Our bed is of sand formed from ancient sediments soft as a rumour Together on this silk desire fills our voices like flocking birds like a new friendship filling the night You and I are a late-night conversation in a tavern by the sea at the fount of the horizon Nurtured by longing we come to this shore to teach the dawn new tricks And we go to the forest to gather wood from new trees Stone gives birth to stone and I will wait for you forever knowing that nothing can stop the earth rolling down the mountain of life * Translated by Sarah Maguire and Hafiz Kheir with Anna Murison and Nariman Youssef رجاءً لا تلدي، عبد الله الريامي Please Don’t Give Birth!, by Abdullah Al-Riyami No one predicted the day I was born: the breast that fed me was a jug of amnesia spilt by the invaders. So I throw myself onto my shadow to save it from the approaching train; I bare my chest to spears as if I were a shield carried by my ancestors; I climb mountain peaks the way I stroll along the beach, as if these mountains were my seas, their caves my seashells, my days. Now every tree hides a wall beneath its bark: the minute I touch it, I trespass into the property of strangers; the minute I sit down on a rock, it sprouts wings and flies off. Where can I go? How can I stumble away when I hang here like the plait that splits my lover’s back in two? when God’s name lashes from the minarets like whips whipping horseflesh? No one predicted the day of my birth. And the river that bore me has gone to ground in a yawning expanse of endless land that I cross without wings. Like water, when I evaporate, I soar. Like water, when I fall, I am pure. Every time I touch this land, its belly swells: please don’t give birth to another Omani, an Omani who asks me how long this century has lasted, an Omani who invites me to his revels to drink obedience in a cup — while a rudderless balloon, like an exclamation, floats across the sky. * Translated by Sarah Maguire and Hafiz Kheir with Anna Murison and Nariman Youssef عبور، عبد الله الريامي Crossing, by Abdullah Al-Riyami The storm that meets nothing in its path dies. And short sentences are the best way of crossing oceans. *Translated by Anna Murison, Nariman Yousef and The Poetry Translation Centre Workshop إذهبْ وقـُلْ وَداعاً- زاهر الغافري GO AND BID FAREWELL That village, sleeping in the heart of the mountains That village, an illusion captive to the hand of fate Its truths are but winds of sand Its stones only icons, symbols That cool slumber in the bed of the unknown That destiney which vanishes in the fog of the world. Go and bid farewell to that small village. * Translated by Salih J.Altoma with Margret Obank حيرة الشاعر- زاهر الغافري THE PERPLEXITY OF THE POET The poet wakes, In his head a sentence heavey with darkness He hallucinates, he hallucinates a long while But still no door lets in a chink of light His perplexed expression is the message The last message, that will reach no one. The windows are shut And he has to leave for the land of his dreams To pick that poisoned flower he’d heard about but never seen. Like a prisoner rolling a rock His hallucination leads him To the wells of his childhood Where he hears a far-off voice calling him: - You, madman! - You are possessed! - You will never recover! * Translated by Salih J.Altoma with Margret Obank |