This poem is from Yamani’s most recent collection, Farewell in a Tiny Triangle, published by Dar Almutawassit.
Love
By Ahmed Yamani
Translated by Omar Ibrahim
Love
was a single blow
from neither an axe
nor a hand,
a bucket of cold water
where the head and legs swim
a hospital bed
and blood dripping from the bedroom to the bathroom
*
Love
was vomiting
in friends’ houses
where they ran here and there
searching for a hope of survival
*
Love
was painful like a rose’s thorn
in the wet garden of a deserted house
where a lonely man once lived
then was buried inside a room
*
Love
was that room,
the immortal shoe of the man,
the worn-out curtain
that covered his remains
*
Love
was the man’s only servant
who hit the meddlesome boys
then went away
to cry,
lonely,
lonelier than the owner of the house
*
Love
was the moment
the boys were struck
as they climbed
mulberry trees
in the abandoned garden
*
Love
was never the mulberry tree
*
Love
was her,
with her round face
and moonstruck eyes
who was only ever there once.
*
Love
was a leap
from the tenth floor,
that left fragments on the ground
*
Love
was the dropsof blood
from the sidewalk
to the ambulance
*
Love
was the skinny body
they threw out of the car
*
Love
was the car that crashed into the lamppost
*
Love
was the locked wardrobe
inside the locked room
in the grandparents’ locked house
*
Love
was the doorman’s lit cigarette
*
Love
was the thief
who went to rob
the grandparents’ house
*
Love
was the sick woman
the horror of her withered body
her eyes
the boiled food
they took to her
*
Love
was the axe that strikes
*
Love
was the hand holding the axe
*
Ahmed Yamani is an Egyptian poet based in Spain. He holds a PhD in Arabic Literature from Complutense University of Madrid where he currently serves as an Associate Professor. He has published five poetry collections and was previously awarded the Rimbaud Prize in 1991, the 39th Beirut Prize in 2010, the Poets from Other Worlds Award in Spain in 2015, the House of Translators Scholarship in Zaragoza, Spain in 2011 and the Fairmont Studio Writers and Artists Centre Award in 2012 from the United States of America. His poems have been translated into nine languages, and he has participated in poetry festivals in Egypt, France, Spain, Lebanon, London, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Morocco and Medellin (Colombia), as well as numerous translations from Spanish to Arabic.
Omar Ibrahim is an Egyptian literary translator, poet and essayist. He translated Mahmoud Morsi’s collection of poems It’s Time I Confess into English, and his Arabic translation of H. P. Lovecraft’s novella The Whisper in Darkness was on the bestselling list of many bookstores. He also has his own poetry collection, titled Fragments of My Mind, and two upcoming translations.
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