Friday Finds: Poetry ‘At That Outcast and Lonely Hour’
On Monday, Robin Moger posted four new translations:
The first two were of the great Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus (“Meeting with an Arab poet in exile“) and contemporary Egyptian poet Ahmed Yamani (“Tomorrow the village market day.”) Yamani’s poem was from from his collection collection أماكن خاطئة (Wrong Places).
Boulus’s poem begins:
At that outcast and lonely hour,
that hour of night when choices narrow
until each absence takes on meaning as a cloud of smoke,
between the voices of the drunken patrons in that small restaurant
and the wash of the still sea that beats, below, against its rocky shore,
The second two poems were both by Mohab Nasr, author of the much-lauded collection يا رب أعطنا كتابا لنقرأ (Please God, Give Us Books to Read). They are as yet unpublished.
“The sea we know” begins:
The sea we know
was a spontaneous motion
a fear running over
holding taut the surface
of our bodies, wave after wave
and time was, too
More by Mohab Nasr:
“Please God, Give Us Books to Read,” trans. Youssef Rakha
“Disgrace,” trans. Moger
“Apple garden,” trans. Moger
“A point of view,” trans. Moger
“The outstretched hand,” trans. Moger
“A blow off the table,” trans. Moger
“My angel,” trans. Moger
More by Boulus:
“Times” and “A Pebble,” trans. Sinan Antoon
“The Child of War,” trans. Antoon
“A Portrait of an Iraqi Person at the End of Time,” trans. Antoon
“To Imru’ al-Qays on his Way to the Inferno,” trans. Suneela Mubayi (with commentary)
“To the Master of the Banquet,” trans. Antoon
“The Meaning of My Prayer,” trans. Antoon
Two Poems: “Railroad” and “A Pouch of Dirt,” trans. Antoon
“The Corpse,” trans. Antoon
“Siege,” trans. Sargon Boulus and Alistair Elliot
“Tea with Mouayed al-Rawi in a Turkish café in Berlin, The Letter Arrived,” “The Refugee Tells,” and more, trans. Youssef Rakha.
Four Poems: “The Siege,” “The Borders,” “The Letter Arrived,” and “Incident in a Mountain Village,” trans. Sargon Boulus
Four Poems: “The Ziggurat Builders” and “O Player in the Shadows,” “The Legend of al-Sayyab” and the “Silt and a Key to the House,” trans. Boulus
More by Yamani:
“The Two Houses,” trans. Rakha
“The Big Escape,” trans. Rakha
“Tobacco Seller,” trans. Rakha
“The Book,” trans. Rakha