كتاب نماذج من الشعر العربي المعاصر بالإنجليزية/ج3
ترجمة منير مزيد
اهداء إلى واتا العزيزة



Widow in a Swamp

By Dr. Yousif Shahada (Palestine/ Poland)


Let her go…!
Do not steal her from her swamp!
How She sunk till her ears in its algae and gallstones
How... !
How she ran behind the shepherds of unfair clouds
When wolf clawing with its blood the face of the earth.
She is the widow of the brunette earth,
The brood of desert’s sand.

Ridden thorn
In a tremble of death,
Thirsty.
She is the lady of the coming death.
She is the lady of darkness,
Hovering with her buttocks like galaxy dust,
Entering the gate of our planet,
A thread in a needle.

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Three Triangles

By Dr. Yousif Shahada (Palestine)

Three triangles

If the Moon knows that
You are the star of midnight,
It will not appear.

If the rain knows that
You are the cloud dance,
It will not pour down.

If people know that
You are the tear of mirage,
They will invent rain.

Woman from Glass

At the mirror of the world,
-This unknown nadir-
I saw a woman,
Coming out from the silence of broken glass,
Breathing heavily with the exhaling of her tresses.
A smoke of train is wiggling quietly...
Oh her polished glass cells!
Oh the moan of her repressed blood!
Ah how alive he is in my heart!
Ah how dead he is in the mirror!

Triangle Picture in a Dice

Your pale picture
Became in the middle of petals
On the dice table
Your rival started foretelling your luck,
But you stood up and left the café
Without farewell.

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The Dreadful Silence

By Batoul al- Alawi (Morocco)


Why is this dreadful silence?
Are you still thinking of the yesterday?
Hesitation and confusion are ascending your facial features.
I can’t longer bear your silence.
Talk, do not be an absent minded,
Talk, you’re the decision maker and the boss.
I beg you, by the truly love and covenants,
Forget not what between us – the covenants.
You could be upset from me
Or you could punish me,
Regarding things I have no hand on,
But I accept not your doubt about my honesty.
O my sweet heart,
Let not doubt have a place in your heart,
Strangle not our love by your hands,
Get out of your dreadful silence,
And forget what happened in that day.
Bother not nor care;
What days might bring to us,
Think only of love and harmony,
And forget what befalls on us from grief and pain.
My eagerness leads me to you,
Be merciful and stretch your hand for me.
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It’s not Me

By Bilal Al Masri (Lebanon)


It’s not me;
Nihility has no shadow to follow.
Your voice which amazes me I do not hear;
The one who is standing between your hands.
If all the trees flowered,
If all the women delayed their autumn,
Your favors would not be of any benefit to him.
Your voice that worries me,
I do not hear it
I am not the mount to send it back to you
Nor am I the abyss to pass me by
Without falling.
Inflict me so I may know your heart in my time.
The one, who stands there, is a mirage.
The one who sits here is not me.
I do not know if I were present or absent.
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Lover’s Confessions

By Ali Al- Muhammad (Syria)


I want you to be a coat for my winter,
For freezing winter that overwhelming me.
Frost, frost,
All around me,
And you’re the wood of winter,
And a flower withering away in my eyes.

My eagerness takes me to you, o woman of madness,
Sedition holds me and so does its damned sigh.
Nothing remains from all my breaths
But moans distributed to your neck
Like a Lantern of the night before it was chocked by pallor,
And extinguished by a merciless wind.

Shall I wait your voice or my death?
Oh coat of the wind,
And the murmur of stored blood
That flows in the veins.

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Praying for Fatima’s Morn

By Omar Alwi Nasna –(Morocco)


This morn wakes up slowly,
Unfastens the fitness pocket of its coat.
Thus the butterflies of heart fly.
All the beasts of spirit run.
This morn drips wine,
Intoxicating all the plants of the heart.
They reveal their appealing to the light
And divulge to the breast of dawn.

This full morn remembers well
How the secret is revealed to Fatima,
And how the universe is inscribed on her lust,
As the sea teaches her the names...

This morn preserves for her
All the region’s pigeons,
And sends her breast a wild horse
To conquer all the realms of poetry,
All the burnt cites by tears,
And all the tempters of flower.

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Various faces

By lobna Almanusi (Morocco)


Lisa:
I know that your cello
Is bored by repeating the same tune.
The black butterflies
Strike you with more light.
Your white dresses
Constrict your thinking
When fingers spread
Their snails
Unto your indoor closest.
I know it is necessary
For you to curb in the threads
Like a candle,
Usurped and annexed by the secrets,
Tossed by days
Without getting her feet involved
In the game of their invisible gardens.

Lisa:
I know the raw sky
Is like an orange of our coming autumn.
It is still in the correlation
Waiting our scents
And the color of our old desires

Edith:
It is not necessary
That the lights of harbors look like us.
We only need music
That can pass by.
The membrane of the ocean
Rolled Under our fibers.
We need other solar transformations
Under the item
So that sands may not mingle with us
And smear the universe
With female’s fluid,
Suitable for interaction,
To creatures,
Coming only from direction of the head.

“Farrukh”

Alone, the empty sound
Of the Highlights of the curse
Is cruising the Cups of night
Without a hat,
Without a female,
Or
A handful of darkness,
And Then
It wakes up.

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To a Poetess, Scent me!

By Said Kan – (Libya)


Scent me!
For I need some of the spray of jasmines.
Sprinkle the fragrance of Daisies
Around me!
Besiege me
As Poems are clouds of nectar
Around me,
And shower me..!
I heard so much poetry,
But
Not as sweet as hearing you.
You turn the letter into a perfume
When it comes out from your lips.
So pardon me,
I am insane with poetry.
Thus accept
My insanity…!

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Spaces

By Dr. Mohammed Shadi Keskin (Syrian)


Here I am,
Your Spectrum haunts me.
Alone, like an enigma,
I watch through my window
Spaces,
And walls besieging me.
Thus I close my eyes without my lashes,
Being awake without a moon,
And depart without a travel..

I write to you my sighs
Upon the recitation of insomnia
While the ink is from my worry.
My messenger to you is my thigh:
Features of the sorrow of my drowning.
Take away my despair, take away my vain,
And what so ever obscenity I have in myself.
Take me like a melody
On the swing of destiny.
I pass the avenue
Without a feet,
Or steps,
Or travel...!
My age is the age of universe.
My ambition towards you is eternal;
Is my eternity without a trace…?

I am the moments of those who died without a reason,
And lived without a purpose.
Time and I are in war.
I blame my age,
Unless it increases insomnia,
Unless I live in danger.
I wake on pain,
And slumber not without pain.
I am billion dilemmas;
The universe’s illusion is one side ,
The illusory fire of hell is on the other side.
Fire and I are in my pulse,
Life without failure.
I am so acquainted with life’s misfortunes.
They do not make my foot quaver...!
Then how come now the doctor of time
Asks me,
What my illness was,
Do I bestrew my wounds
Spaces?

Will I tell him about the past,
About the memory I live for?
Will I tell him
That I am a string with no Instrumental playing.

I am an error without an apology.
In my rebellion, I am a rage
That touches in secret my weakness.
My wound and I are in my fate.
I always gather
My bleeding
But when the time of my traveling to you
Comes,
Be sure,
I will scream o my self …enough!
You blunted my history,
And tore my times,
And buried my peers,
While I used to hide my tear .
This soul
In my palm hand
Thus I will Yell: O my self ….Enough…!

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Image’s Mirrors


By Laila Ibrahim (Saudi Arabia)


I beg the darkness of the night,
And slumber.

The moon’s light is pecking
At my fantasy,
Thus the image drips.

Image has a glow that ignites the fire of emotions
while the mirrors of image have the glisten of light.

In the image,
You are a meadow of roses,
While I am your perfume.

Image has the softens of the breeze,
And the chirp of dews.


Legendary princess is that image
While wearing the diamond of ecstasy

Night sprinkles the attar of its spirit for the image’s neigh
Enrapturing the stars, as the galaxy celebrates
The melody
Of the charming image.

Dawn grows in the night’s heart,
Thus its fruits pour down,
And light ascends the forehead of the range.
Wakefulness is extinguished, thus the image splutters.
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Waves

By Amer Al-Debk (Syria)


Oh Wave,
What is it that tempts you with this running
To hold her blue shirt?
Oh Wave,
Return back to your sea, pleased and so pleasing to him.
For lo! The one who touches her shirt
Will drown,
Even the seas.
If they want to dive in it
They come by a boat…
Oh wave,
How you dare
To touch her tresses
As the wind spreads at the doors of her tresses...
Oh Wave,
Tell to the foolish sea
To be a shamed,
And to leave off the wave for a while,
And pray to the black hair…!
Oh Wave,
Who is the one that brings you out
From the depth,
And who stuffs your head with these mad ideas
To be spilled
In the eyeballs...
Oh poor one,
The sea sends you to commit suicide
So that he may rest from eagerness.

Oh Wave,
Brag not,
Since there is a sea behind you
that drowns any one touches his wave,
Slapping the shore rocks
Whenever he wills…!

Brag not…!
The vast sea,
The angry ,
Choppy,
When seeing her,
He scatters and casts his waves away ,
And begs
That her eye may set out
Every evening
To his vastness....
He promises her
To cast out all the salts
Those hang over him
In order to be sweet.
When he touches her,
Lights clothe him by the touch of her palm.

Oh Wave,
Keep your finger away
From her body
As your fingers
Have the taste of wind,
And her body
Has the shape of a cloud…!

Oh Wave,
It is better for you
To rest over the sand
So that the sea may drag you
From your stark tail...
It is better to stop
For a while,
Throwing her with squirts of your jealousy .

Oh Wave,
Be aware of her appeal;
The sea will mock,
When you melt
Over the tip of his fingers.
As the sea is bashful,
And coward,
He is too weak to admit
His defeat.

As her charm is revealed,
He sees her.
He roars
Till the water becomes white,
And he cries when she pushes him
By her feet.
As he goes too far,
She slaps him with her hand.

Thus he moves ahead,
Defeated,
Ashamed,
And coward,

The sea is still
Sad,
Resorting between shores...
The Tremor touches him
When he sees her
Taking off
The fish of his temptation,
Wrapped in the cloud of her appeal..

So many times,
Because of his astonishment,
He gets quiet like being frozen
When he sees her
Taking the cloud away from her,
Rising,
And waking like an angle of light
Over the water…!


Note : he is referred to the Sea.

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Between You and I

Ibrahim Al Kahwaji (Morocco)


Between you and me


Between you and me, god,
And the flowers of September,
And brochures for the anniversary,
And chalk of dreams,
And faces inhabiting memory
Stretching out
My temptations in your eyes,
And in the cities of your grief...


Women from Ashes

For the hands of chalk and bread
This anthem,
For the beautiful and forgotten one between the flowers.
Your day comes weary:
Day that you bury it in a day.
Torment enshrouds your heart in ashes
After Sunday has become calm.


The Bird that didn’t Talk to me

Before you appear a star in my sky,
I used to watch it,
Energetic in agonized waiting,
And death touring near me…!
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Émigré

By Reem Al Ban (Yemen)


I am an Arab who was torn apart by my Arabism.
My homeland tore my national identity,
And changed my personal profile
From a good citizen
To a tourist- nothing more.

I return to my homeland,
Embrace its choppy waves like my feelings,
Deep like my sorrow,
I shake my hand with its clear sky like my childhood.

My homeland did not discern me.
It instilled its index finger in my fervent wounds with compassion till Hemorrhage.
Miserable, I left it.
It is no longer a homeland
Nor am I a good citizen.
I left with one saying in my head which I keep repeating:
If your home constricts you,
The world will not be enough to accommodate you.
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The Chess

By Hassan Al-Raey

Perhaps,
If the Rook retreated one square,
The king would be checked.

The knight kicked the chest of a hurry Pawn.
The Bishop stretched out a trunk burdened with hate,
Knocking down Knights worn by traveling
Like a lighting arrow...
The Queen made a hole in the Bishop’s belly glutted with corpses.
But a coward Pawn
Pushed the Queen to a pool of blood.
Thus the Queen died of suffocation, without knowing the truth.

In a colorless square,
There was a colorless angel sitting,
Planting a colorless rose.
He did not care about all that blackness which kings left behind
Nor did he care about all that whiteness which pretty cheerfulness kept on applauding.
He did not care about any thing that was happening in the silly area of death.

When the game was over
The angel said without any surprise,
“As usual, they all died…!”

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If You Want it for Yourself then It will be a Burial…


By Dr. Mohamed Nasser (Jordan)


O homeland that is blemished with wounds,
I will carry my flag an arch in my palm hand and a weapon.
The light after bitter darkness loomed.
Who said that the tweet of my sparrow converted into lamination?
I say to him: the night is followed by morning.
Who said that my vineyard became permissible to my enemy?
I say: the leaves of the olive trees will be complemented by a struggle.
It is enough for you, Jerusalem, my covenant to you.
I will heal the wound that makes our hands bleed.
Oh my siblings who hold fast on the spears,
Come and let us ride and advocate death,
Come and let us knock the doors of martyrdom,
Door after door.
Jerusalem will not come back into us
Unless we face all the troubles.

I still hear the voices of those wolves.
I still hold her tattoo over my hand, Hemoglobin.
You want to embed here, in our land
A jaw after a jaw,
Come and behold what is left, oh my companions...?
If they want to see you a ruin tomorrow,
Then do not be afflicted, O our Jerusalem…!
It is our pledge to keep her identity and soil.
If Zionist exhorts its cruelties, the armature blackness,
Do not ask patience to wait for a while
For the fire is still under the ashes.
I adore danger and ride danger like ridding a horse.
What we aspire is not impossible,
And what they ask is not here.
The land of Palestine won’t leave us,
And we will get her back with our tawny prime.
This our country and this is me.
If you want it for yourself then it will be a burial…
Your Laugh
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By Lubna al-Shalabi ( Palestine)

A light is glowing in my body,
Towering with pride like the joy.
Beacon lights my ancient grief,
When your absence guides me to you.
I need it as air
Whenever my heart beats with life.
I long for its musical tune
When I heed my loneliness
In the luminous darkness.
Your laugh is a spark of safety,
Increasing my confidence in this chaotic,
Illustrious on the Earth’s surface..!
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The Trembles of the Fingers

By Nawal El-Salih (Morocco)


Go and leave behind you little of the bread’s crumbs,
And sleep on a pillow that knows no shame...!
For the evening chants, I pray.
None hears the sound of water
Only few effects of your neck-tie,
Small picture sleeping bare footed,
The vial gas hailing victory for Toothbrush.
Never are the robes of laundry dirty;
Enough from a tale of an old woman who narrates the story of her rebelling sparrows,
Fugitive with the meaningless news of newspapers.
Only the minister knows his clothes racks.
He stands hanged with his empty face.
The Delayed Street of death is awaiting its shirt’s buttons,
And the woman with her elegant purse waiting Godo.
Psychiatric hospital is not far from here, oh prince of death, it is in postponed Street.
The wall-man is a homeland without an anthem,
A dog without a name licking the face of the bag.
It seems it is walking without feet somewhere,
The returning way, the irreversible memory.
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The Precursors of Death

By Faisal Abdul Wahab Haider (Iraq)


In time passed by,
I came near the lips of fire…
I kissed the lips of fire.
Thus I was burnt without ashes…

In time passed by,
I slew my father
Because
I inherited grief from him
And a ramshackle house…

My beloved came
Lamenting me with no tears.
I said to her:
“How? I am still alive not dead.”
She said,
“You had died before you came to living a thousand years ago”
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You

By Majida Abdel Nabi (Egypt)


I draw my pain on the map of my life,
Thus distances carry me to you.
Oh tree where I lean my head,
Whenever my feet get weary,
The path gets lost.

My prayers are for you, Oh you who travels too far.
Oh you who travels inside me….. In the fragments of my age.
Oh my dream that runs before me and I follow
You are my gallows that attracts me,
As if I were the awaiting victims...!
You are my pain
The pain that I love…!