Poems of Whiskey and Regret by Rasha Omran

These two poems by Rasha Omran — along with two others — originally ran in the ROAD issue of ArabLit Quarterly. We share them now as part of Women in Translation Month.

Two Poems by Rasha Omran

Translated by Phoebe Carter

Regret

You’re not with me

I remember this every day

And every day I watch the movement of life

How everything moves on and you’re not with me:

Seasons leaving their traces on my skin

Friends passing on one by one

Late-night dances that have become a neutral rite

Medications I take without fail while forgetting daily my promise to you to remain

Calm

The days that pile their trivialities around my waist

The war I live in the midst of as I sit here on my small sofa

The thoughts I search for so I can write my articles

Everything goes on as usual while you’re not with me.

Only my fingers know what’s happened

My fingers that write to you every hour: I love you

And then: don’t come

These fingers of mine that I see every morning dismembered and tossed on the floor

next to the bed, and all that remains intact is the forefinger of my right

hand

which I stick into my pupil, to touch your face therein

Your face is all I see

Your face and this life that goes on as usual

While you’re not with me.

Jack Daniels

I’ll drink a glass of Jack Daniels alone

Why should you have to be there?

Why’s there no one but you?

Why does anyone have to be there at all?

What’s so bad about loneliness?

Loneliness is an easy-going companion

Never lets you down

Rasha Omran is a poet born in Tartus, Syria in 1964. She now lives in Egypt; these poems are from her sixth collection, A Secret Wife of Absence.

Phoebe Carter translates poetry and prose from Arabic and Spanish. Her published translations include poetry by Argentine poet Laura Yasan and Syrian poet Rasha Omran, and the Moroccan novel Kafka in Tangier.