These poems appear in Egyptian Rana al-Tonsi’s forthcoming collection “الناقص” (“Incomplete”).
Translated by Sara Elkamel
Final Barrenness
Sometimes
The sky doesn’t draw its drapes
As the first long, desolate night descends
We are third-class patients
Or, the less vulnerable
We are the victims of wisdom
The moment the window opens
And the air pushes its way through
Without appropriate exhalation
We know now
What the years have done to us
The bed that has been vacant for years
Of all the dead bodies and martyrs
Must finally be left barren
So it may stand tall
And watch its soul infinitely fall
Over strange arms.
All I smell
Is the stench of an iron
Abandoned on run down clothes
Until they caught fire
And a wet circle
And white teeth
Undoubtedly unsmiling
And dreams that die
When there are no longer balconies to leave from
And I have been writing poems for a while
I don’t exactly know
If this is my pain, or theirs.
But I Always Lose
Through one of the runaway doors
That’s where I found myself
*
A fairy is dragging me from one light to the next
And nothing escorts me
But laughter
*
We are incomplete fragments
Gestures hiding behind one another
The fragments of uncertainty
Glimmer
In absence
*
I brought the eyes home
The glances towards deprivation
I caught sight of no one
*
I am full of fractures
What scares me is that I’m trembling
*
Superheroes alone
Accomplish everything
The normal way
*
All women who commit suicide look alike
All women who haven’t committed suicide look alike
Someone has opened a window
To bring a large stack of colored paper into the house
*
The circus is in my wallet
The animals dance in the night
Laugh without a sound
They have no idea how to hide in a circus
*
The fighting in my head is never-ending
A phone is ringing
*
The world’s new discoveries
Pain, solitude and despair
*
You will sleep in my arms
And you will come out of my body as a sparrow
*
Is there a way to contact heaven?
I wage wars against myself
And I always lose
Loneliness
There are others who inhabit this heart just as I do;
I love them eternally.
And there are madmen on bikes I mistook for magical
whom this journey did not seize;
my luck failed to thrust me between them.
And there is you,
perched on the maps of the world
lighting a fire
speaking to me of loneliness
on a shore that departs and returns
like someone with no desire to leave home.
To my only friend:
I wish you were here,
so we could take a long walk
together.
Rana al-Tonsi is an Egyptian writer and poet. Born in Cairo in 1981, al-Tonsi is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently Index of Fear (Dar Al-Ain Publishing, 2018).
Sara Elkamel is a poet and journalist currently based in Cairo. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. She is the author of the chapbook Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021).
