Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Ramadan 8, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

From A Man from the Empty Quarter (Beirut 1994) By Saif Al Rahbi (1956- )

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Some of the Sultanate’s treasured poems, originally in Arabic, translated by Khalid Mohammed al Balushi (khalidb@squ.edu.om)


EXCERPTS (1)


(1)


Life slyly slips from my hand


After I clung on it.


I stare at it


Turn from the heel of my evening


To my first cup


To chase her like a huntsman,


The start of a galaxy’s birth in my head.


(2)


I seek shelter


From the palm tree of the past,


Sneak into the dreams of those sleeping


On roofs dazzled by sun and breeze,


I inspect my memory’ citizens


Like a commander inspecting his troops


That ran away from slaughter.


(3)


The key to abyss is a cup of wine:


That’s the life we steal


From the wolf’s mouth.


(4)


Like prayers, stars have their own chapels


We saw them in their luminous mihraab,


The shooting stars sank in our eyes


Like large needles from travelling light


We didn’t fathom immortality.


(5)


An Iraqi


Bends to pick up a date


In the wind of exile


Remembering Iraq’s dates.


(6)


We’re not stupid,


We’re not doves of war,


We shall plow this injury


Till the last tear in the horizon.


(7)


Like a churn,


The sky verges on explosion,


Thunderbolts and hailstones


But it doesn’t brighten.


(8)


The past is before us like Polar islands,


Where the ice melts


In instalments.


(9)


We owe nobody,


But our bereaved feet owe distances.


(10)


A kind hand stretches with father-like love


Takes us to it


While calamities picnic on the pavement.


(11)


I saw the shooting stars cry


On my father’s farm,


The storm of clouds and the fainting of orbits.


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