Opinion

A philosophical touch for small details of life

Al Rahbi has played a pioneering role in ushering in a new poetic diction in Oman. Formally, he champions a form of poetry free from traditional musical patterns and a vocabulary accessible to a wide audience

Saif al Rahbi is amongst Oman’s most well-known and prominent contemporary poets. Born in 1956, he lived abroad during his youth for over two decades.

Seeking knowledge and occasionally practicing journalism, he moved into a number of Arabian and Western cities, such as Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Paris, London, Amsterdam and Bonn.

Upon his return to Oman, he founded a quarterly cultural magazine 'Nizwa'. At its outset, the magazine showcased (and still does) articles, research studies, reviews, translations and literary works, both fiction and prose.

Drawing upon his exposure to these cultural centres and upon the Arabic cultural and literary heritage, Al Rahbi has played a pioneering role in ushering in a new poetic diction in Oman. Formally, he champions a form of poetry free from traditional musical patterns and a vocabulary accessible to a wide audience. Thematically, he elevates the everyday, the common and the down-to-earth by bestowing upon the small details of life subtle philosophical touches.

He’s published a number of poetry collections such as Jabal Akhdar (1981), One Knife Is Hardly Enough for Slaughtering a ِSparrow (1988) and The Soldier that Saw the Bird in His Sleep (2000). He has won several regional awards (including the highly prestigious Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Letters). He still supervises the magazine in his capacity as its editor-in-chief.

The East

At the beginning of every day

As I pluck out my first steps

To the jungle

The east dawns from my blood

Like a strange sun

I see horses rushing

With manes touching the sky.

A Night

(To Imro al Qais[1])

A night you can't cut with a saw

Or arrest in a cup

A foxy, moody night

It sometimes seems like a clown before a crowd

And slips sleekly like a bridegroom's fur

The night of diviners and truck drivers

Hasn't yet loosened its curtains

But insidiously made its creatures gossip

Strangers loom on their sea-facing balconies

Ships sink in sailors' memory.

An unassailable night

A rugged night

It's loosened its curtains on the world's neck.

The Stranger

This man who takes us to his distant lands

Unfolds on his bed and the table

The heaps of faces and places

Traces the borders of his days

Hill after hill

A tower, a deserted village, a city devoured by war

Bites on an apple, smokes, remembering:

The graveyard of his grandparents

His mother in rags sleeping between sand dunes

The glass grabbed by hands

Before he sips its dregs and sleeps.

The wind hisses outside like a wolf

(Truly, he'd seen a wolf-pack in childhood)

The stranger heaps on his table faces and destinies

Tries to write

About what?

O soul of winged carriages

O soul of rains and dawn's trains

The soul of a stranger weeping at the start of the road!

A Bag

A man living in a bag

His feet are crossways

At every cross there's a gloomy sky.

He once on a horizon saw ewes

Remembered his grandfather

Lit a candle in a cave

Kept roaming around

Century after century

Till his shadow cracked

And his days overflowed with tears.

A Special Sky

This eagle that redesigns the sky

Along with his peculiar mood

Sometimes stoops to see

The beauty of the painting he drew away from God.

This eagle

With a beak carrying storms like rabbits

Sways into ecstasy and memory:

A spring where he descended with his mate

Plains and valleys he crossed with an old friend

Peaks of the Himalayas

And Jabal Alakhdar (2).

Dreaming of eagles to fill solitude's expanse.

The sky's wild scapegoat remembers too the glory of his personal wars

And offspring on the edge of extinction.