Chapter 1
Start writing here…
Preface
Contemporary Arabic poetry, an outstanding phenomenon in modern Arabic civilization, does not stand apart from the new trends in contemporary world poetry. The Arab poet builds his knowledge horizontally across the cultures of the world and vertically across his rich, varied traditions. Both dimensions can be seen in these selected texts from Yemen.
It is well-known that the Arabic language is capable of rich metaphor, helping the poet create and explore new poetic styles, microcosms, as well as new directions of thought. In other words, metaphor allows the Arab poet to explore a wide palette of imagination, after the freeing but potentially destructive effects of modernism. Consequently, in the most recent Arabic poetry, we are sometimes faced with enigmatic syntax.
In translating these texts, I tried to create a special relationship between myself and them. The first time, I read them as if I were the author, trying to deconstruct their structural codes, discovering their semeological components. Then in the second stage, I worked to construct these components in English, attempting to the best of my ability to keep intact the beauty and sense of the original.
Readers will find in the notes explanations of the important dialectical phrases and names.
I would like to thank Professor Nicholas Linfield, for his aesthetic assistance on some of the translations. In addition, I am grateful to Dr. Abdul-Aziz al-Maqalih for encouraging me to translate this collection of Yemeni poems.
Soheil Najm
Abdu Uthman
The Wall And The Gallow
(To the year 1972 )
1
I hit,
squeezing hand in hand,
tightening hair to hair.
I nearly take away the skin,
digging into the skeleton in vain,
beating the breast, beating the breast,
looking for a loving heart.
How full of love and desire it was!
Then I look carefully at things:
what happened to them?
What happened to us?
2
“In the dark angles,
I plunge into the hardest war,
fighting Satan and angels.
At times, I return to the vows,
vying with the prayer call at dawn.
I run, but the minaret runs away.
The sounds are vanishing, and the sign.
I fell in the dark bewailing the civilization,
screaming at the wall,
hitting my head against it.
Oh, what atrocious days,
what an atrocious city!
Even when the moon is shining from its sky,
or when we plant the lights in the water and trees.
Oh, when we go with awaken,
the aspects of boredom defeat us.
Everything is omitted from our account ,
and falls in our silence.
You tormented me yesterday;
You'll go deep in tormenting me tomorrow. >
O, you robes of the gallows!
I drag them; they drag me
forward, backward.
I feed them with an age of days,
marching to the execution field.”
Ahmed Qassim Dammaj
Melancholy
Whom I supposed to thank
in the calmness of the night?
A quenched star,
a loneliness going deep in the soul,
fearful and wandering as twilight vanishes
before the glowing of the poem.
Cities, with invaders competing, trample
Upon the breast of nature, killing trees.
Where should I go?
***
The night is spreads its nails
in eight directions.
Neither the south straightening on the cool overflow,
nor the barrier of death abandons
the face of sunset.
The north stretches out of the poem
into the clamor of fire.
***
I had stature before the overflowing
flood this evening.
I had a stadium,
fellows, musical pipe and intoxication.
I had shelter in the ode
I wandered about love – stricken.
I sang,
danced with ghosts in the sharp dreams.
I drew dawn on a front of nourishing
and a sun on a horizon of wounds.
And I was … I was …I was,
till the ridiculous reaction dominated,
and I lost my blood's bride
in embracing the date palms and the river.
Then I vanished in a channel of denial!
***
Whom shall I thank?
The face of drought surveying?
The earth's waist?
The soil that doesn't cover the corpse?
The capitals
that deny their sons and embrace the Jews—
Who will stand for this fearful waste?
And the ode…
Who will stand with me?
Abdu Uthman
The Wall And The Gallow
(To the year 1972 )
1
I hit,
squeezing hand in hand,
tightening hair to hair.
I nearly take away the skin,
digging into the skeleton in vain,
beating the breast, beating the breast,
looking for a loving heart.
How full of love and desire it was!
Then I look carefully at things:
what happened to them?
What happened to us?
2
“In the dark angles,
I plunge into the hardest war,
fighting Satan and angels.
At times, I return to the vows,
vying with the prayer call at dawn.
I run, but the minaret runs away.
The sounds are vanishing, and the sign.
I fell in the dark bewailing the civilization,
screaming at the wall,
hitting my head against it.
Oh, what atrocious days,
what an atrocious city!
Even when the moon is shining from its sky,
or when we plant the lights in the water and trees.
Oh, when we go with awaken,
the aspects of boredom defeat us.
Everything is omitted from our account ,
and falls in our silence.
You tormented me yesterday;
You'll go deep in tormenting me tomorrow. >
O, you robes of the gallows!
I drag them; they drag me
forward, backward.
I feed them with an age of days,
marching to the execution field.”
