May 2012
VOL XX, Issue 5, Number 229
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Heather Ferguson
European Editor: Mois Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter
Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena
ISSN 1480-6401
Contemporary Iraqi Poetry
Edited and Translated
by
Khaloud Al-Muttalibi
In order for the English reader to understand, enjoy and appreciate contemporary Iraqi poetry, light must be shed
on its past.
The reader will find that the translated poetry reflects the experiences of theIraqi people, dictatorship, social
problems and the horrors of war and terrorism that the country still endures.
The article that accompanies the poems, written by Professor Malik Al-Muttalibi (College of Fine Art, Baghdad
University) aims to paint a picture of the historical background of contemporary Iraqi poetry and the stages through
which it went.
Khaloud Al-Muttalibi
Iraqi Poetry, Diverse Horizons
It is not possible to understand the contemporary Iraqi poetry scene without shedding light on its historical back
ground and the transformation through which it went. From the oldest discovered text, dating back 2000 years,
until the middle of the twentieth century A.D. (1947 to be precise), poetry was produced within a fixed frame, known
in critical terms as "vertical Arabic poetry". In these eras, known according to modern critics as the classical eras,
the changes that took place in poetry remained within the frame of the vertical structure, which was represented by
the sixteen meter and the rhyming sequence. The changes were confined to breaking the popular type of metaphor
without affecting the boundary of typical vertical Arabic poetry. The poets of the third century of Hijra (800 A.D.)
led the transformation, with Habib Ibn Aus (Abu Tammam) at the forefront; this was the new classical period.
The dialogue that took place between Abu Tammam and his listener reflects the confusion he had created in the
popular figurative form. He asked Abu Tammam, “Why do you say incomprehensible things?”
“Why do you not comprehend what is being said,” Abu Tammam replied.
From this dialogue we may conclude that the stalemate caused by new classical poetry referred to comprehension and
conveyance rather than to the essence of poetry.
The main characteristics of the classical form are:
1 . The focalization inside a fixed outer form, which is represented by two hemistichs that are defined by the nature
of the poetic meter. The second hemistich ends with a repetitive rhyming that continues to the end of the poem.
2. There is no organic unity in this entity so the poetic verse becomes the foundation and is not connected to the
other verses other than by the outer connection of the rhyming and meter. There are exceptions of course, especially
regarding pre-Islamic poetry, on which no one can pass a general critique of judgment. Therefore, classical criticism
considered making the poem circular and the meaning of the verse incomplete without relying on the other verse to
complete it, which is one of the flaws of this kind of poetry. According to this trend, the term, “the core of the
verse” came to be used, which is the verse that represents the essence of the poem while the other verses remain
as a decor for this sole motionless verse.
3. After Islam, the focus was on the substance rather than shape of the poem as poetry came to be valued in light
of this criteria; good poetry is that with moral subjects. In short, the moral criteria became the focus of the
classical criticism movement rather than the artistic one.
4. Learning poetry is related to its clarity, because vagueness is considered to be a flaw, as we have seen
in the dialogue of Abu Tammam.
5.The domination of self-lyricism, in which the poet's self-pronoun become the focus of the action and direction.
(2)
It seems that the saying “history does not repeat itself” does not apply to the movement of the history
of Arabic poetry. After the transformation that the classical period had witnessed, Arabic poetry in the
late Abbasid eras and the eras that were known as the dark period (Uthman's rule) reverted to the poor types
of poetry, such as with poetry of occasions, sermons, iterative adage, and laudatory poetry and so on.
Poetry renovation (within the classical form) that took place in the first quarter of the twentieth century
was not able to bring about the awaited Arabic poetry revolution. The first revived form (in the first
Abbasid era), remained the inspiring model for those poets.
(3)
In the middle of the twentieth century, in 1947 to be precise, there had been a violation of the conventional
Arabic poetical form, represented by the rhyming and metric patterns, by three poets, Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab,
Nazik Al-Malaika, and Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayati. These poets ended the rhyming and metric patterns in favour
of the free verse or Tafila, launching the Arab Free Verse Movement or Tafila poetry.
In this new poetic form the sources from which the free poet derives his poems were varied, ranging from
drama, legends, historical symbols, Sufism as well as from the christian heritage, Christ and the cross. The
usage of the latter in poetry became noticeably evident. The noisy city which began to turn its back on the
nomadic values had a big effect on the modern poetic performance. Western poetry had also had an influence
on contemporary Arabic poetry, in particular on Al-Sayyab's poetry, whose work had especially been influenced
by Edith Sitwell and T.S. Eliot. This movement brought a shock to readers and triggered debate between
supporters who had long awaited this innovation and others who had opposed it and thought of it as anything
but a poetic movement because it overlooked the rules of poetry, stating that it is nothing other than a
movement that is founded by incompetent poets who are incapable of forming the complex structure of poetry.
(4)
In the sixties, with the arrival of the philosophy of Existentialism (for example Sartre's work and his trilogy
of books, Colin Wilson's work including The Outsider, The Stranger by Albert Camus, the works of Edgar Allan Poe,
and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury). The first split came from within the innovators themselves,
influenced by the Lebanese poetry movement and its periodical and poetic standpoint. Among the opponents of the
free verse movement from the Lebanese poetic school were Yousif Al-Khal, Said Aql and Adonis (although he is
Syrian). Meanwhile, the Iraqi poets of the sixties, including Fadel Al-Azzawy, led a fierce campaign against the
free verse movement and its three symbols, describing it as a new dress on an old body. They accused the poets of
the free verse movement of deluding themselves by claiming that they broke the metric form and the rhythmic patterns
whilst remaining heavily involved in form and pattern. They did not bring forth any changes other than the changes
that were related to its quantities rather than qualities. The sixties poetry fanatics tried to use provocative
alteration within their poems, which led to the manifestation of geometric poems, breaking up the writing system by
representing it with geometric shapes like the triangle and the circle or designing the words vertically or
horizontally. Also the usage of metaphor exceeded the historically intended limit. The struggle resumed in the
following decades and, in parallel, the classical type remained fortified inside its cocoon as described by its
opponents.
(5)
In the eighties, with the coming of Philosophy and the method of Structuralism, nearly twenty years after it was
launched in France (its place of origin) and with the influence of the French student movement, prose poetry
systematically appeared. The prose poem by Sarah Bernhardt took everyone by storm. Numerous young poets embraced
this unique type and it found its own step among those marching on the road of poetry.
As an academic from a conservative environment who is occupied with literary history, the theory of poetry and
its method and writing, I confess that that the prose poem is the only one that is able to form interlocking
techniques in the face of a world drowning in the illusions of its reverie. It is the only one capable of answering
the questions of creativity which are, in short, how to avoid repetitiveness and emulation.
Lastly, will the readers of those varied poems be able to hear the echo of their historical movement fully or
intermittently? Only then will our analysis be of value, otherwise the poems by themselves can say more than what
we have said or can say.
Professor Malik Al-Muttalibi,
a lecturer of Linguistics and Literary Criticism at the college of Fine Art, Baghdad University.
25/2/2012
Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab
The Rain Song
Your eyes are two palm tree forests at early dawn
Or two verandas from which the moonlight recedes
When your eyes smile, the vines put forth their leaves
And the lights dance like moons in a river
Rippled by an oar at an early dawn
As if the stars were pulsating in their depth
And they drown in a mist of sheer sorrow
Like the sea stroked by the hands of the evening
Containing the warmth of winter and the quiver of Autumn
And death and birth, darkness and light
A sobbing flares up to shiver in my soul
And a ferocious elation embracing the sky
An ecstasy of a child scared by the moon
As if arches of mist were drinking the clouds
Drop by drop dissolved in the rain
And the children burst into laughter in the vineyard bowers
The rain song tickled the silence of the sparrows on trees
Rain
Rain
Rain
The evening yawned and the clouds were still
Pouring their heavy tears
As if a child, before sleeping, was raving about his mother
A year ago, he woke up and did not find her
And when he kept asking about her
He was told
After tomorrow she will be back
She must come back
Yet his companions whisper that she is there
Laying dead by the side of the hill
Eating soil and drinking rain
As if a sad fisherman was gathering nets and
Cursing the water and fate
Scattering songs as the moon sets
Rain
Rain
Do you know what sorrows the rain can prompt?
And how gutters sob when it pours down?
Do you know how lost a lonely person feels in the rain
Endlessly like bloodshed, the hungry, love, children and the dead
It is the rain
Your eyes take me roaming in the rain
Lighting from across the gulf sweeps
The Iraqi shores with stars and shells
As if dawn was about to break from them
As if a sun was about to rise from them
But the night pulls over a coverlet of blood
I call out on the gulf “O gulf
O bestower of pearls, shells and death"
The echo replies as if grieving:
"O gulf
O bestower of shells and death"
I almost hear Iraq massing thunder
And storing lightning in mountains and plains
In order that if the seal were broken by men
The winds would not leave any trace of Thamud in the valley
I almost hear the palm trees drinking the rain
Hear the villagers groan and the immigrants
Struggling with oar and sail
The gulf storms and thunders singing
Rain
Rain
Rain
And there is hunger in Iraq
The harvest scatters the corn in it
The locusts and crows may eat their fill
Granaries and stones grind on and on
Mills turn in the fields surrounded by humans
Rain
Rain
Rain
How many tears we shed when the night of departing arrived
Making the rain an excuse fearing the blame
Rain
Rain
Since we were children, the sky would be clouded in winter
And the rain would pour down
And every year, when soil becomes green
We starve
Not a year passed and Iraq has not suffered starvation
Rain
Rain
Rain
In every drop of rain
Red or yellow buds of flowers
Every tear shed by the hungry and naked
And every drop of slaves' blood shed
Is a smile awaiting a new mouth
Or a nipple becomes rosy in an infant's mouth
In the young world of tomorrow
Giver of life
Rain
Rain
Rain
Iraq will become green
I call on the gulf: O gulf
O giver of pearls, shells and death
The echo replies as if whimpering:
"O gulf
O bestower of shells and death”
The gulf scatters its plentiful gifts
On the sand: a lather of salty water and shells
And the remains of the drowned forlorn immigrant still
Drinking death
From a fathomless gulf in the silence below
In Iraq a thousand serpents drink
The nectar from a flower, the Euphrates has nurtured with
Dew
I hear the echo
Resounding in the gulf
Rain
Rain
Rain
In every drop of rain
Red or yellow buds of flowers
And each tear shed by the naked and hungry
And each drop of slave's blood shed
Is a smile awaiting a new mouth
Or a nipple becomes rosy in an infant's mouth
In the young world of tomorrow, giver of life
And the rain pours down
*
Badr Shakir al Sayyab (poet & writer)
Born in Basra, Iraq (1926–1964)
His works include Wilting Flowers (1947), Hurricanes (1948), Flowers and Myths (1950),
Dawn of Peace (1951) and famous long poems include The Grave Digger (1952), The Blind Prostitute
(1954), The Weapons and the Children (1955), Rain Song (1960), Al-Chalabi's Daughter's
Shanashil (1964).
Nazik Al-Malaika
I
The night asks me who I am
I am its deep black anxious secret
I am its rebellious silence
I masked my true nature with calm
And wrapped my heart with suspicion
And here I remain distracted
I gaze and the centuries ask me
Who I am
The wind asks me who I am?
I am its perplexed soul that time disowned
And similar to it I have no place
Endlessly, we walk
We do not stop, we just pass through
And when we reached the turning
that we thought was the end of suffering
Suddenly it is just void
The time asks me who I am
Similar to it and as powerful as it, I fold the eras
And come back to grant them resurrection
I create the distant past
From the infatuation of a pleasant hope and
Then I go back to bury it
To form a new past with
An icy future
Myself asks me who I am
I am as perplexed as it, I gaze at darkness
Nothing would give me peace
I keep asking
And the answer will remain blocked by the mirage
And I keep thinking it comes closer
And as I reach it, it melts suddenly
It fades and disappears
*
Nazik Al-Malaika (poet, critic and researcher)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1923 – 2007)
Her works include Night's Lover (a collection of poetry) (1947), Sparks and Ashes (a collection of
poetry) (1949), Bottom of the Wave (a collection of poetry) (1957), Tree of the Moon (a collection
of poetry) (1968), A Tragedy of Life and a Song for Humankind (a collection of poetry) (1977), For the
prayer and the revolution (a collection of poetry) (1978), Modern Poetry Affairs (1962), The Psychology
of Poetry (1993), The Sun that is Behind the Summit (a collection of stories) (1997).
Sargon Boulus
The Soldier's Moment
That moment that I apathetically pricked sideways, with my rusty spear
the side of Christ
He who disdained my empire and Rome, all of Rome
with a look
I am the silly soldier whom history may mention with a word or two
Because he insulted the prophet, put his crown of thistles on him and gave him vinegar
I am the living worm in the apple of the world
*
Sargon Boulus (poet, writer& translator)
Born in Habbaniyah, Iraq (1944-2007)
His works include Reaching the City of Ayn (a collection of poetry) (1985), Life Near the Acropolis
(a collection of poetry) (1988), Witnesses on the Banks (autobiography) (1997), An Abandoned Room
(a collection of stories), The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (a translated book), If You Were Asleep in
Noah's Ark (1998).
Saadi Yousef
Had the Night Become Ambiguous to Me?
I have nothing to remember tonight
I have no truth
I mean, I cannot remember where I was born,
Whether bread is necessary, or
Whether the communism of Mao Tse-tung is the most beautiful
Occasionally, we enter a tunnel within tunnels
Will we reflect?
Maybe it would have been best for us not to go into the first tunnel
Maybe it would have been best to shout
The communism of Mao Tse-tung is the most beautiful
Or the slogan of a demonstration
We want bread
Maybe I had to remember where I was born
I have to say
I was born in the south of Basra
In a country that used to be called Iraq, in the manuscripts
(I do not know how I can call it that, now)
I have to say:
My blood is for an Iraq that is not governed by the Americans
*
Saadi Yousef (poet, writer & translator)
Born in Basra, Iraq (1934)
Place of residence: United Kingdom
His works include The Pirate (1952), Songs not for the Others (1955), The Star and the Ash
(1960), Visual Poems (1965), Far Away from the First Sky (1970), The Ends of North Africa
(1972), Al-Akhdar bin Yousif and His Occupations (1972), Under the Monument of Faieq Hassan (1974),
All the Nights (1976), The Last Hour (1977), Less Silent Poems (1979), Poetry Works
(1980), Who Knows the Flower? (1981), Mariam Comes (1983), The Spring (1983), Attempts
(1990), The Poems of Paris, The Trees of Ithaka (1992), The Lonely Person Wakes Up (1993),
Erotica (1994), All the World’s Bars (1995), Naïve Poems (1996), The Bar of the Monkey
Thinker (1997), The Memoirs of the Castle’s Prisoner (2000), Candid Live ( 2001), The Fifth
Step (2003), The Pagan’s Prayer (2004), My Choices (2007), The Last Communist Enters Havens
(2007), The Song of the Fisherman and the Poems of New York (2008), The Poems of the Public Park (2009),
The Italian Book of Poetry (2010), In the Wilderness Where the Thunder Is (2010).
Malik Al-Muttalibi
The Owl's Nest
What is this cold owl in my body's cage
The curly owl that wears old women's scents,
Women with lost sizes
The curly owl
Leaves me empty at daytime
And perches on me at night
The cold owl
plucks out my dreams one after another
And puts them under its bottom
It then sits on them
While scanning my body's cage
With its night vision
The Language
The hag with the white gown
And iron teeth
That names things?
No! A crone with a white gown
And iron teeth
Does it name things? No
It claimed that
To cover up its shameful action
As all that is assigned to this crone
The one with the white gown
And iron teeth,
Is to give things
Equal sizes
The Bell Tolls for the Thousand Deaths
The ringing of the bell tickles their backs, they run outside
Their leaps break the air
Their shoulders, a memory of bags, swaying
The sky inclined to one side
Giving room to each cradle, walking on the ground
The earth is busy trying to catch up with them
The parents who stopped breeding
Mastered drilling the doors, ready for the roll of the eyes
The windows await their stones to begin a new day
In the courtyard, the cats of midday utter the meow of desire awaiting their return
The ivy becomes overgrown by their glances, looking over the wall at the beginning of the street
On the roof, the balls of cotton gathered around themselves and the chopped-off tails of the airplanes and their
bodies which were sitting on the ground awaiting their departure to the desired heavens
God, were you there when the rain came down?
A rain of flowers, ribbons and laughs that did not reach their lips
A rain of sentences that lost their way outside their luggage
A rain of sellers with half their bodies appearing from the winding wall as it goes round
A rain of a nestling fluff, slumbering in their palms
A rain of tambourines, the dervishes beat
And of iron sheets they clang together
As a night banquet was held for the blind, a water banquet for the drowned and a heavenly banquet for the dead
It froze in their pupils from the evening of the show till the midday jog outside
The rain did not come from above; the sky was a glass with blue veins that stepped aside while looking at its orange
Rain came from rain in the colour of the orange sky
Then became like a red light
Soon it transformed into a purple drizzle with a soft resonance
As if it was a bell about to stop
God have you seen a rain of children?
Have you seen a pool of children with ships of papers sailing in its torrent, descending from their pockets and
floating when they dived in the blue blood?
*
Malik AL-Muttalibi (Arabic language scholar, poet & critic)
Born in Missan, Iraq (1941)
Place of residence: Baghdad, Iraq
His works include The System of Ranking in the Theory of Arabic Grammar (research), Al-Makhzomi and the
Modernization of Grammatical Thought (research), The Effect of Translation in the Arabic Language Structure
in Light of Theory (research) Hypothesis (combined research), The Concept of the Arabic Linguistic Time as
in the Manuscript of the Orientalist Paul Kraus (the system of the verb in the Semitic language) (combined
research), The Response of the Arabic Language Towards the Contemporary Challenges (research), The Night’s
Shores (a collection of poetry) (1965), What Comes after Death (a collection of poetry) (1979), The Tuesday
Mountains (a collection of poetry) (1984), Abu Tamam, (screenplay) (1972), Language and Time (1985), Al-Sayab,
Naziq and Al-Bayati, (linguistic study) (1986), The Explanation of Alfiat Ibn Malilk by Ibn Aqeel (combined
modern study especially for university students) (1994), Sickly Inanimate (a collection of poetry), The
Memory of Writing, Excavations in the Neglected Unconscious (autobiography) (2007), The General Science of
Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, translated by Dr. Uael Yousif Aziz (a book review) (1985), The Mini
Encyclopaedia (the structural analysis of narrative by Roland Barthes, translated by Nezar Sabry) (a book
review), Appearances do not Deceive (interpretation of Goethe, translated by Adolf Muschg also translated
by Thamir Muhammad Saeid Omar) (a book review) (2005), The Dress, the Body (analysis of Al-Sayab poems),
The Illusion of Intuition in the Theory of Poetry (literary criticism), The Mirror of Narration, (a combined
study of Mohamad Khudair's stories) (literary criticism, part one) (1990), The Mirror of Narration; Narrative
Criticism of Basriatha, the vision of Autumn by Muhamad Khodhier (literary criticism, part two), The Contemplation
of the Sacred (a research in sociology of literature, ideology criticism of the Sociologist Ali Alwardi,
manuscript).
Kezar Hantush
You have to Provide Five Gallows
You have to provide another five gallows
to please all the sons
one gallow for me
another for the homeland
And three for the strangers
Take me to you now
Bite my fingers so I can perhaps recover from the thirst of
bitter poverty and my longing or
be sure that I still love the humble ones
The newspaper wept from the end of the front page
The newspaper rags disappointed us with what it carried in the Obituaries
Perhaps it realized our latest disappointment
The disappointment of a poet who read the stand when he did not find the poem
*
Kezar Hantush (poet& writer )
Born in Diwanya, Iraq (1945-2006)
His works include The Red Forest (a collection of poetry) (1988), The Happiest Man in the World (a collection of
poetry) (2001).
Muhamad Shamsi
Longing
O my companions
Tomorrow when I go never to return, I knock at the night
A bird in the mist I pass before you
I talk to you and no one answers back
Who would hear the dead at night?
Who will call him?
Who will wipe away the sorrow from his heart
O my companions
Ayandy
Like women's tears, he used to flow
Like sparrows in a journey to the north, he used to clear the fields
Like a delightful rain
The earth lies in his voice
It stretches, with a fondness for its dry desert.
The sea loves its waves and
The men love the women
One evening, he was
A cloud that gathered itself then turned to the house between the fields
The trees told it: fading is the beam of light on the luminous fruit
The birds on the cliff, quiver from the chill
One evening he ran like the tears of women
And on the slant of a dagger
A cloud slept in the open air
Ayandy: a murdered African poet
*
Muhamad Shamsi (poet, novelist and children's writer)
Born in Missan, Iraq (1943-1996)
His works include The Roaming of the Sun, (a collection of poetry) (1968), The Blood of the Beach Trees
(a collection of poetry) (1976), The Comedy of the Amphibious (novel) (1979) A Thousand Miles inside the Forest,
A Hot Land, Strangest Journeys, The Cities' Memories.
Children’s books include The Thieves of the Sea (1981), The Mysterious Ship (1983), Night Ghosts (1984),
A Trap in the Forest (1984), The Pirate (1984), Princess Scheherazade (a series of children's tales), The Bird’s
Revolution (children’s fiction) (1971).
Abdulzahra Zeki
The Bodyguard
The guard behind me
Is also beside me and in front of me
The guard who accompanies me, sometimes precedes me
And other times tarries
Unseen, shadowing me
The guard who was born with me
Throughout my long sleep, not a moment did he slumber
I drank from his glass
He ate from my plate
He stood between my feet and a road I did not enter
He stood between my tongue and words I did not say
In war, he stood between my finger and the trigger of the gun
That old guard
Did not care about the world
Still young
Occupied with me
Wary of me
He used to watch me
And I used to guard him
Frightened that he grew old
The Solitary Daytime
On that day
the owl
was talking about the musk rose on the mountain
About the musk rose
as it became delighted, in its solitude,
with the owl's talk of it
On that day
There was no longer any musk rose
The owl celebrated
And the mountain continued, uttering the song of the owl
as it talks about the loneliness of the musk rose
*
Abdulzahra Zeki (poet, writer & journalist)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1955)
Place of residence: Baghdad, Iraq
His Works include The Hand is Discovering (a collection of poetry) (1995), The Magician (a collection of poetry)
(1999), The Book of Paradise (a collection of poetry) (2000), Ram Allah (a collection of poetry) (2001),
A Monogram of Light and Water (a collection of poetry) (2009).
Khaza’al Al-Majidi
Before the Cruel-Hearted
Before the ones with cruel hearts and thick bodies, he stood
They came to spoil his eroticism
He said to them:
I am not suited to be a soldier
They invaded his fields, slaughtered
his animals and broke his cups
And with the nail they hit his right cheek and
With the butt of the gun, they hit his left cheek
He saw his leaves drag their bark
in the mud
They tore his wine flask
Trifled with his trees and left his home
Devastated
They took away the patch of his hypostasis
Replacing it with the wind
*
Khaza’al Al-Majidi (poet & dramatist)
Born in Kirkuk, Iraq (1951)
Place of residence: Holland
His works include Delmon’s Wakefulness (a collection of poetry) (1980), Israfil’s Anthems (a collection of
poetry) (1984), Kha’zaeel, (a collection of poetry) (1989), The Cane of Rambo (a collection of poetry) (1993),
Contrary Physics (a collection of poetry) (1997), Snake and Ladder (a collection of poetry), Maybe Who Knows?
(a collection of poetry) (2008), Sumer Travel (1990), Sumerian Tales (1995), The Old Jordanian Mythology (1997),
The Roots of the Mandan Religion (1997), Prehistoric Religion & Beliefs (1997), The Incense of Gods (a study
in medicine, magic, legend & religion) (1998), The Sumerian Religion (1997), The Bible of Sumer (1998), The
Bible of Babylon (1998), The Egyptian’s Religion (1999), The Aramaean Beliefs (1999), The Encyclopedia of
Astronomy Throughout History (2001), The Mythology of Eternity (2002), Greek Beliefs (2004), Romanian Beliefs
(2005), The History of Old Jerusalem (2005), Isolation in the Crystal (play) (1990), A Diamond Party (play)
(1992), Hamlet without Hamlet (play) (1992), The Crow (play) (1992), Short Plays (1993), Scheherazade’s
Judgment (play) (1994), The Key of Baghdad (play) (1996).
Kudhayer Meery
Furnishing the Sickroom
At first sight, they do not seem to resemble flowers at all
The music of feet in the adjacent corridor
The sound of a heartbeat that no one can hear except patients like us
The drowsiness from the anesthetic
The smell of iodine as it flies with us and
departs with our protective dreams
The affection which arrives too late and a state of light madness
comes over the obelisk of flowers
The stack of repulsive fruit and the boasting of blotting paper
There is a back pulled out of someone's body
The chemicals of a perfect phrase
Days spent imprisoned and restrained from any movement
We are annoyed with the excess metal forceps and the intense faces
and the unreserved gazes of the nurses who
we undress, morning and evening
A leg fell from me, a flesh of a calf and a pound of black blood contaminated with my name
And a glow of bones which were young before they became old and wrapped with ice
Saliva dropped into the plate of soup
Under my pillow, a cat meowed and when it jumped out it was distracted
It was blood stained
Aristocratic, it was, even after stepping out of a massacre
*
Kudhayer Meery (poet, novelist & critic)
Born in, Baghdad, Iraq (1964)
Place of residence: Cairo, Egypt
His works include The Gardens' Thief (a collection of poetry) (2012), Buddha's Desert (a book of prose) (2009),
A Black Bin liner for Rubbish ( a collection of stories) (2009). Jinn, Madness and a Crime (novel) ( 2007), Tales
from Alshamaia (a collection of stories) (2006), The Autobiography of a Skull (a collection of stories)
(2003), The Days of Madness and Honey (novel) (2000).
Khaloud Al-Muttalibi
The Game of Life
A clash of metal against my horns
The dry hand that pulled me back
My brother's feet crush mine
Their bodies' heat becomes my hell
Before I take my last breath
The gate screeches and the field expands
My heart leaps with the taste of freedom
But my executioner is close behind
I stumble before your vicious bark
Life's cage narrows when I remember
I am the sheep with no name
Ghosts and Poets
Digging deadly trenches
Preparing for a long war
Wars are forlorn
As wretched as they are
Warning of losses
His war
Her war
It does not matter
A woman's ghost
A teenager's ghost
A child's ghost
He was not certain
Ghosts cannot speak
They cannot feel
Nor can they be hurt
They pluck out their hearts
Before birth,
And hang them on their beds
Away from dreamers
Passers-by or poets
Except for those who
Eavesdrop
*
Khaloud Al-muttalilbi (poet & translator)
Born in Missan, Iraq
Place of residence: England
Her published works include Psalms under a London Sky (a collection of poetry) (2010), Under an Icy Sky
(a collection of poetry) (2010), and A Portrait of Uruk (an anthology of poems and stories) (2011). She
translated Arabic poems into English, for poets from various Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco,
Palestine and Syria. She has also translated literary criticism articles. Khaloud has participated in The
Anthology of Contemporary Arabic Poetry as a poet and a translator, published by the Artgate Association in
Romania. She has translated selected poems of Klaus J. Gerken as well as numerous modern and classic English
and American poems, and a series of classic English poems and commentaries by professor Ian Lancashire
(University of Toronto), Canada.
Adnan Al-Saeigh
Uruk’s Anthem
The labyrinths take me into their darkness
”The thread was cut- Ariadne,[1] who is leading my steps to the door?”
I rub my eyes
I see my knocks on the door
It opened cautiously
I find myself mumbling in a panic
”I brought the newspapers my lady, would you like…”
”Leave it at the door.”
I wipe a stuttering desire off my lips
Going back towards the corridor that separates the two rooms from the sea.
From the hole of my soul, I see her strip
So I open my fridge
And prepare my dinner on my own
Cold sausages
And a voracious mouth
More of the dancing in the air, O my body
Maybe the bombs are ashamed of our idolatrous nakedness
Before the sad God
If the saliva dries, we run to the cliff, to dip the stick of our dreams in its mud
Then we sit on the rocks
Will it ever be green
Bigger than a hole
She approaches, the scent of her chest
Undulates raunchily
Towards the only mirror
I hear a mixture of her breath and my panting
At the start of dawn his vision suddenly descends upon me
Trembling like a morning star
I wrap it with my ribs
We both disappear in breathlessness
The morning grass on the table
Becomes wet
My coat slumbers on her
clothes rail
And my tears on her mirror
”Where am I?”
I leave the chaotic room wearing my lust
I catch the bus and become trapped between her and the luggage
She slips into the crowd of commuters.
He was trying to touch me with his suspicious fingers
He approaches
So I split into
stale drink and raw desires in his mouth
At the start of the bridge, the bus stops, quivering,
I flee towards the door.
The sun approaches from the buildings’ balconies
It dips its feather into the sea
And paints your mouth.
The sounds of the stubborn roosters fade away
I close my books
And slumber alone
The knocks on the door wake me up
”Who is it?”
A fearless mouse leaps near me
It gnaws at Al-Muttanabi, and a sack of peas
Then it slips into the hole blocking the daylight that was wearing a dusty throw and dancing
I shut my eyes, perhaps I see you
All that is left for me is the trickle of your glass
You are giddy with drink
Time went by:
Every evening, a boy from the streets brings disorder to the bar
And returns late in life
To look for a flat
And a fixed-up girl
But his hands will quiver on the buttons of my shirt
And slide on the glass, and when the door was opened
The scent flew into the corners
And I knew you were coming
I said, “This corridor is my ribcage, she will pass through
as long as she feels the bushes of my tears grow”
She rushes towards me
”O, pauper poet turn around
Turn around, a tear, frozen in the evening
on the ivory of my breast, proud with perfume
I pour my neighing
And get drunk on a star which will
whisper about your poems”
Or a street will bite its finger
Regrets
Parting with your slow steps
Was I delirious to breathe amongst the ruins, this perforated air
We hurriedly drink the girls’ brewed tea
leaving the rancid trench towards the space of the offices
The cannon slowly sips the tea of our life, and dips the cakes of its scales
In the distraction of the tinned air between us
My language is fragmented
And your voice is woven silk
Rustling in the wind
Has the bombardment quietened down, so I can see my mother come, white
And ask about women who become widows in peacetime
I write my family history as an orphan should
I grew old and did not pay attention to my wrinkles[2] within the mirrors
I noticed after breathing a mixture of exile’s air, I grew old and my admonishment with the flute
lasted long
The way to the pasture of Kanaan became long
Weeping prolonged, I said “Nothing wrong with setting up our tents right here
until the bombardment quiets down
Who will rock your bed my son, in the strange land?”
The guards wear the night like a hat, their helmets are the rust of God
On my son's skin, I carve my tattoo
To grow in his lungs, songs of wounded fields
He asks me “Where is the road of
the quarantine?”
As he seeks refuge in his tear, in the building’s shadow
The snakes of longing creep up on me and crush me. Each time I said Ah, the jungle of his moustache grew
1. Ariadne felI in love with Pistiou. She helped him by giving him a ball of fleece, so that
he could find his way out of the labyrinth.
2. Quotation from Mahmoud Darwish: We grew old a little and did not pay attention to the wrinkles of
the tone of the pipe.
*
Adnan Al-Saeigh (poet, writer & journalist)
Born in Kufa, Iraq (1955)
Place of residence: United kingdom
His Works include Wait for Me Under the Statue of Liberty (a collection of poetry) (1984), Songs on the
Bridge of Kufa (a collection of poetry) (1986), Sparrows do not Love Bullets (a collection of poetry) (1986),
Sky in a Helmet (a collection of poetry) (1988), Mirrors for Her Long Hair (a collection of poetry) (1992),
Cloud of Glue (a collection of poetry) (1993), Under a Strange Sky (a collection of poetry) (1994), I Got
Out of the War Inattentively (a collection of poetry) (1994), Formations (a collection of poetry) (1996),
Uruk’s Anthem (a collection of poetry) (1996), Yelling as Big as a Homeland (a collection of poetry) (1998),
Carrying an Exile (a collection of poetry) (2001), Works of Poetry (2004), Those Bitter Years and the Other
Exile (a collection of poetry) (2006).
Karim Al-Najar
Statues
The carriage, drawn by an old horse
Took away the statue[1] of the man who committed suicide
But in the square, the crowd staged a sit-in
Erecting their tents in solidarity with the statue
Sold by the carriage owner
To the smeltery man
In return for the horse's fodder
What am I going to do with these dolls?
Like a wave, I am surrounded by wires
It makes me float on an old board
What am I going to do with the statues?
They hang their insignias
Like a one-way road sign
What am I going to do with the flower?
That mummifies its leaves with wax
And melts when touched by my fiery fingers
Is it for the dolls, the statues and the flower
I mend the tears and prevent my stomach from shouting
1. The statue of Abudlmuhsen Al-Saddon, the first Iraqi prime minister who committed suicide in
1929.
*
Karim Al-Najar (poet & journalist)
Born in Shamia, Iraq (1960)
Place of residence: Holland
His works include A Country Collapsing Behind its Dimension (a collection of poetry) (1987), That Obelisk
(a collection of poetry) (2008).
Abdul- Khalik Kitan
The Lake of Blood
To the Iraqis in their daily anguish
Do you see these torn-off limbs?
When every day, the city streets are coloured with blood
And old women beat themselves on television
While fathers say goodbye to their flesh and blood one by one
God do you see these severed members?
Do you think of the wisdom behind that?
The wisdom of bloodshed
Drought
And hunger?
This country is the icon of affliction
Where dictators and adulterers are passing through
Each time the same scene is repeated
I was hiding behind the window
When intimidating soldiers burst into the street
Firing heavily at fleeing children
Families were barred from weeping
The city was considered a frontier
Each hour, bodies were brought to its hospitals
At first this was done by carefully prepared trucks
Year after year
Then they were loaded on donkey-drawn carriages
What was considered to be a border city became a war front
The war consumed uncountable lives
Did you see?
Where you there?
Did you hear the cries of the wounded on the edge of death
Then March came
A crowd was lined up to be taken captive
Cruel headsmen carrying sticks and whips
While the crowds were jumping towards the river
That swallowed them
And even larger crowds were buried on its banks
O beautiful river:
The companion of the fields and villages
Do you remember your dead friends
Years pass by; the girls shrivel and lose their youth
The poor are ravaged by disease
We were looking for a buyer
We have sold the house and its slums
The milk and silver
We have sold and sold
At last we sold the head of this body
A hand of another
A heart, kidney and an eye
We sold and sold
Until our terrified mother cried
There is nothing left at home but the corpses
The streets, factories and cafeterias,
Were packed with corpses
Did not you see all of that?
April came
Then June
With regiments of small men killing the rest
None of our older fathers
Noble women
Or any of our insane
Can unravel the mystery of what is happening
Those who were robbed of their will;
The poor in this vast land
Decided to seek you
You were the only one to whom they whispered their secrets
O God
What is your solution?
We are tired of what is happening
We are no longer able to weep
Our voices have been carved out
Like the limbs of our men
We are tired of the permissible space
We create our own story
Just like a river
And you are the one who makes the wrong decision about
When it is going to flood
Or dry up
*
Abdul- Khalik Kitan (poet, writer & journalist)
Born in Missan, Iraq (1969)
Place of residence: Baghdad, Iraq
His works include The Displaced (a collection of poetry) (1998), The Paupers of Baghdad (a collection
of poetry) (2000), Waiting in Marion (a collection of poetry) (2000), Dijla Street (manuscript), Delayed Pipes,
(a collection of poetry), A Necklace of Violet (a collection of articles).
Faruq Salum
Questions for Your Amazing Stillness
You take the letter from my hand
To paint our silence
In the wind, your unrestricted voice keeps pace with
the storms of the days
It is my sea, ships and my departure
It hides the anguish of our warmth when we miss the sanctuary of years
Each time I saw the star of our distant sky
I believed you were a deadline for another dream
Like a start of each day
We crossed the distances of sand
And spent the whole of sorrow in the middle of the desert
A limitless horizon of agony of cruel travel
There is no friend to furnish the dust of the road
No promise emerges from the grass of thirst
Or fire
Ascended in an endless spirit’s adventure like a spring
We drank the shadows of trees that were absent, in a second of fear
As if we did not follow the city's trace, as if it was not the city
We left steps that used to be ours
We were lost in the middle of the steps of those who got out of the country’s well
As if we were drawing a distant house similar to ours over there
We are a plant that blossoms then dries
A tree that is burdened with vows
And a path for the secrets of the companionship of years
Love was insufficient to give torment a flavour
Love was nothing but anguish for the rituals of our days
And we are in a path of impossible salvation
Each turn to our corners is a memory of a city or a name of a place
All our songs are an attempt to retrieve Fairouze[1]
In a second of a morning that had passed
Like a nightmare that plucked everything
Like a knife at the moment of killing
We carry our dreams; a sun searches for a horizon
We leave each beginning over there
To start again
1. A well-known Arab singer.
*
Faruq Salum (poet, writer & translator)
Born in Tikrit, Iraq (1948)
Place of residence: Sweden
His works include Rainbow (a collection of poetry) (1977), The Songs of the Horse (children’s fiction)
(1980), Gilgamesh Epic (1986), The Girl of Dangers (teenage fiction) (1987), A Tight Shirt for a Fat
Daytime (a collection of poetry), other children’s fiction (1977-1988), Details of Our Days (a collection
of poetry), Schizophrenia (a collection of poetry).
Shaker Laibi
Yousuf Al-Nasser's female neighbours
This pampered child relaxing under the sky of Jujube
This horseshoe that is thrown under the bed
This bough that is crackling with the chair's movement
This cat that is sleeping in the dry skin of the red watermelon
These female neighbours who do not stop passing through the garden
What is this, Yousuf?
My ghosts
Van Gogh's eyes
The horse straightens its mane and
bends, staring at the insect
at the petal of a gardenia, rotting in the mud
It counted to ten
and disappeared behind the fence of jasmine
*
Shaker Laibi (poet& writer)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1955)
Place of residence: Switzerland
His Works include The Fingers of Stones (a collection of poetry) (1976), The Heartbreak of the Ruby in the
Siege of Beirut (a play) (2003), Seeking Help (a collection of poetry) (1984), A Poem and Twenty Sketches
(poetry & sketches) (1988), How (a collection of poetry) (1997), Roots and Wings (a collection of poetry)
(2007).
Hassan Blasim
A Love Song in a Broken Flowerpot
To all my friends in the valley of pain
Let you be me
consider my circumstances
I do not have a choice
kill me, please
Why do you hate me?
Why do you detest me?
Why do you loath me?
O pain, why do you hate me?
I love you and you?
Do you know how flowers wither?
Your hatred is mysterious
You detest me
Let you be me
Without us flowers shrivel
All flowers
Your abomination is scented like flowers
You detest me as a human being
Be like flowers
An amazing pain
Flowers
Flowers
Flowers near a patient
My flowers
My flowers
you hate me
I am dying in a white garden
You hate me
like flowers
The flowers are drowsy
The flowers are sleeping
The flowers
You detest me
Like a dying flower
You hate me like a human being
flowers
flowers
O pain please
Do not stumble among the flowers
The road
All of it flowers
*
Hassan Blasim (poet& writer)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1973)
Place of residence: Finland
His Works include Poetry Advertisements Must be Bought (a collection of poetry), Madman of Freedom Square
(a collection of stories) ( 2009), The Poisoned Shia Child (a collection of stories) (2008).
Hassan Mutlak
The Masks
The poet is a person
who wrote a great poem then lost it
Look:
“Hegel” is a great man
because he lost the philosophy
and “Gaston Bashlar” did not find it
because he looked at the ceiling upside-down
because he thought of the thought
because the mockery still stands
as they all died
Only those Sophists;
Men lost the knowledge
because they never talked about it
They are great
as they admitted earlier
the voice of the sparrow rises above
Aristotle
*
Hassan Mutlak (poet & writer)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1961-1990)
His Works include The Masks, You, the Homeland and I (a collection of poetry) (2004), Alfa-Hassan-Beto
(a collection of stories), The Power of Laughter in Ura (novel) (2003), The Book of Love, Their Shadows on
the Ground (autobiography) (2006).
Siham Jabbar
Branches
From a hole in my heart
From an escaped pupil
From the boring cocoon of recollection
In the inside of my head
From me
From the mathematics of reaching madness
And the old luggage of the question
In the aspirations of this small head
Throwing the wombs away from it
From a deep body
From the father I used to be
Then I was scattered
A fetus I chase, and
an unreachable point
O flying I chase your flight
I stare at your narration
O earth
From your mountains and seas, I cut out gowns
O pits I fly
O bottom floor
From the firefly that
Had buried the hole
So it flutters
From the stiffness of my broken hand
So it writes
From the creatures that show themselves
I show myself, I am
Part of me
From brushing away a long punishment
Between closeness and eccentricity
Stopping after continuity
And carrying on after an explosion
From my forgetfulness about all of that
The places got out
To my foot
The world went out to the pit
Here I am
Hanging boughs
on my body
Here I am
Over there
Here I am
Over here
*
Siham Jabbar (poet & critic)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq
Place of residence: Sweden
Her works include The Poetess (a collection of poetry) (1995), The Group of Mirrors (a collection of poetry)
(1995), Bodies (a collection of poetry) ( 2010).
Hameed Qassim
Like Someone Climbing a Mountain
As I walk
Like someone climbing a mountain
As Dalia used to whisper to Zahra
Fifteen years ago and I do not know
I think of the sparrows as they collide
With the glass of your narrow halls
And say
Like them we collide with your glass, and end up like bloody corpses
O homeland,
Every time we are scattered in the air
By your car bombs
And I go
Like someone climbing a mountain
I cross the public park
Staring at the women who
Take off their clothes because of the awful damp
After midnight
I go
Like someone calmly climbing a mountain
Astonished by the wet blotches
Left by my shoes
Each time I lift a foot off the pavement
I go
And replace the homeland with the country
Like someone climbing a mountain
And I say
How you pained us oh, pretty cruel country
Then I realize the meaning is imperfect
As it does not suit you and I, who know your handsome virility
And your exciting and mysterious race
I have nothing to say except
How you hurt us oh cruel, oh handsome country
Oh you savage poet
Oh homeland
As I go
Under the severity of the damp
Like someone climbing a mountain
Covered with a thick dark bush
Wetting my shoes and blotching
Its suede, I say
Oh homeland it saddens me not to love you
But what grieves me more
Is not to see you and not to be loved by you
And you are pushing me away from you
Every step I walk on your grass
Like someone climbing a mountain
And you turn us into
Scattered bloody corpses
Oh homeland
Each time we are dispersed in the air by car bombs
We find nothing other than your hard glass
To be hit against time after time
Like enraged monkeys in a cage
Running
Like someone climbing a mountain
*
Hameed Qassim (poet, writer & journalist)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1954)
Place of residence: Baghdad, Iraq
His works include Anthology of Poetry (2009), This is Also Right (a collection of poetry) (2008), There is No Air
(a collection of poetry) (2003), Travels of Fire (a book of criticism) (2000), The Inscription of Aymen (1993),
The Green Fingers of My Grand Father (a collection of children’s stories) (1992), The Morning Breeze (a collection
of children's poems) (1985), The Mass of the Ageing Childhood (a collection of poetry) (1984), A First Statement
for Childhood (novel) (1983).
Muhsin Al-Ramli
A meaning
A sack of smoke
A cigarette
I am the ecstasy of a wild dragon
A whistle in the sheath of a pistol
An ogress in a fairy tale
A placenta of the Pisces star sign
A rivulet that belongs to no one
I am a mistake
A route to a pistachio tree
An atom
No one cares about me
I mean
I am worth nothing in the language of children
But I am everything
The whole meaning
In my buried mother's language
*
Muhsin Al-Ramli (poet & writer)
Born in Baghdad, Iraq (1967)
Place of residence: Madrid, Spain
His Works include The Gift of the Next Century (a collection of stories) (1995 ), Papers Far from the Tigris
(a collection of stories) (1998), Scattered Crumbs (novel) (2000), We Are All Widowers of the Answers (a
collection of poetry) ( 2005), Asleep Among the Soldiers (a collection of poetry) (2011).
Bibliography of the Translator
As a teenager, Khaloud Al-Muttalilbi moved from Iraq to England, where she finished her academic studies and has
lived there ever since.
Her published works include Psalms under a London Sky (a collection of poetry) (2010), Under an Icy Sky (a
collection of poetry) (2010), and A Portrait of Uruk (an anthology of poems and stories). She translated Arabic
poems into English, for poets from various Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Palestine and Syria. She has
also translated literary criticism articles. Khaloud has participated in The Anthology of Contemporary Arabic
Poetry as a poet and a translator, published by the Artgate Association in Romania. She has translated selected
poems of Klaus J. Gerken as well as numerous modern and classic English and American poems, and a series of classic
English poems and commentaries by Professor Ian Lancashire (University of Toronto), Canada.
Note
Copyright reserved for the translator
All selections are copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2012 by
Klaus J. Gerken.
The official version of this magazine is available on Ygdrasil's
World-Wide Web site http://users.synapse.net/kgerken. No other
version shall be deemed "authorized" unless downloaded from there.
Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.
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