If you didn’t get the message from QISASUKHRA this morning with three new poems from Ahmed Nada, well, you should’ve:
Nada’s first collection, Shortly After Their Going or A While After They’re Gone (بعد ذهابهم بقليل), was published by Dar Kalima this summer. Nada is a 26-year-old dentist, and thus joins the roster of so many dentist- and physician-poets, short-story writers, and novelists (Hisham Bustani, Fady Joudah, Anton Chekhov, Ghazi Gheblawi, Nawal al-Saadawi, Maimonides, Yusuf Idris).
Nada has, according to Ahram Online, a great deal more unpublished material. Three of his unpublished poems appeared in English translation today; get them while they’re hot:
Once and again
One time
I lay on my back
And looked at a time-honoured let-down
Called the sky.
I did not know at the time
That it was a blend of steams, gases, dust,
Dust,
This everlasting drunkard
Hovering in the void
To delude us with beauty.
We are failed clumps of dust
Awaiting affection from other dust. Keep reading on QISASUKHRA.
