O God, my heart is dreadful. How can I revive it?
Who can lull and calm down my heart?
The sound of arrogance is deafening my ear today,
I would have talked to it had I not had self-praise.
Strange my heart has become when in love.
Pure love it is, anyone to perceive?
I have become flabbergast at my ordeal,
I conceal none of my love fears.
I ask God to inspire me.
Do I have a living heart or should I lament its death?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 140th birthday.
Be safe, O Egypt; I will sacrifice
There is my hand for you, if the world raised a hand to hurt you
Never you shall yield, ever
I am hoping for tomorrow to be better
My heart and my determination are with me for strife
And to my heart, O Egypt, you are a faith, in addition to my religion
Safety for you, O Egypt
And peace, O my homeland
If the world threw arrows at you
I would shield you by my heart
And be safe in all times
I am an Egyptian, built by the founders of the
everlasting pyramid, who defeated doom
The pyramids stand beside us
Against the world’s arrogance, is as my stand
In my defense and struggle for my country
I do not turn away, tire, or yield
Safety for you, O Egypt
And Peace, O my homeland
If the world threw arrows at you
I would shield you by my heart
And be safe in all times
Hey, you who are trying to chain our orbits
There is no star in the sky under your control
The homeland of freemen is a sky that cannot be possessed
And the freemen own its horizons
There is no enemy that can attack you, O land of Egypt
We are all for your protection
Safety for you, O Egypt
And Peace, O my homeland
If the world threw arrows at you
I would shield you by my heart
And be safe in all times
To highness, O sons of Egypt, to highness
And honor the future by Egypt
The whole world is to save our Egypt, because
we put our country’s sake first
My left side has my heart
And my homeland is the heart of my right side
Safety for you, O Egypt
And Peace, O my homeland
If the world threw arrows at you
I would shield you by my heart
And be safe in all times
Leave me, my love, it’s time to part
this paradise is not my portion.
I had to cross a bridge of flame whenever
I visited this land of bliss.
Yet I’ve been your life-long companion
since earliest youth and your tender years.
But now I come like a transient guest,
and go away like a bird of passage.
Has anyone drunken with love like us,
seen love like we have seen it?
We built a thousand castles on our way,
Walked together on a moon-drenched road,
Where joy danced and leapt before us,
we gazed at the stars that fell, and we possessed them.
And we laughed like two children together,
ran and raced with our own shadows.
After this nectar’s sweetness we awoke –
how I wished it had never been so!
Night’s dreams had vanished, the night was ended
the night that used to be our friend.
The light of morning was an ominous herald;
dawn loomed up like a wall of fire.
If the sun drowns in a sea of clouds
And extends a wave of darkness onto the world
And vision dies in the eyes of the vigilant
And the road is lost in lines and circles
O shrewd traveler in straight lines and in circles,
You have no guide but the eyes of speech
In honor of Muharram, we present this work by one of Egypt’s greatest Muslim poets.
Oh mother, how does the sky look? And what is light and what is the moon?
About their beauty you speak, but I don’t see any of it.
Is this world darkness upon infinite darkness?
Oh mother, give me your hand and perhaps boredom will leave me.
I walk with fear of tripping, at day or dusk.
I walk unguided, whether the path is long or short.
I walk with trepidation lest I encounter a sudden danger
and the earth to me is all the same, the flat and the potholed.
My cane is my vision. Can you imagine vision so solid?
Children run and play and frolic and there’s no problem for them in that.
But I am blind and sitting at home, in place
God is kind to me and He alleviates my distress.
With pure virtue’s hand I guard the might of my hijāb
and with faultless self-shielding, among my peers I rise
With my thoughts taking fire and my gift for sharp critique
I have brought my poet’s skills to new and perfect highs
I composed poetry expressing an assemblage:
before me, women sheltered, most noble, esteemed, wise
I uttered my verses just as light and playful speech
yet the eloquence of books and logic I much prize
Mahdī’s daughter, Laylā—these are my choice models
as with innate acuity my best thoughts I poetize
How superb these ladies are! A noble weave indeed
in women and in maidens the men do recognize
Given precious pearls of mind, a poet like Khansa’
wanders rocky paths and for a brother, frantic, cries
From the brow of my notebooks I fashioned my mirror
and of ink’s jet-black traces I created my dyes
How often my fingertip adorns my paper’s cheeks
with script’s downy touch or the skin of my youth’s sighs
The candles of my intellect sent their brilliance far,
as the scent of my words perfumed dear ones’ garden skies
Women of great splendor wrapped in shawls of logic fine:
and their envy my presence or my absence defies
In sentiment’s assembly my tresses I undid:
those of goodly lineage their symbols will surmise
The arts of my eloquence, my mind I protected:
talisman dear, hijab’s amulet: danger denies
My literature and my learning did me no harm
save in making me the finest flower of minds wise
Solitary bower, scarf’s knot, are no affliction
nor my gown’s cut nor proud and strong guarded paradise
My bashfulness, no blockade to keep me from the heights
nor could the veil’s lowering o’er my ringlets disguise
the wager’s arena though the horsemen’s ambitions
from the hardships of the race suffered demise
No! my might is my repose, my knightly prowess lies
in the beauty of my striving: finest goals I prize
Not to mention a secret whose essence is sheltered
though word spread far to strangers of its rarity and size
Like musk it is sealed in the drawers of treasuries:
but the fragrance of its sweetness spreads in saffron sighs
Or like the seas as they embraced hidden gemlike pearls:
when the hands of seekers touch, the touch will paralyze
Desiring to obtain and to have those lovely pearls,
what troubling trials these divers brave, deeds that sense defies!
World-renowned amber agreed to give pearls protection:
its nature is recited in every book one buys
So I touch my fire to the wick in the lamp of skills
granted me by holy God, gifts of the Giver Wise
In honor of the Egyptian holiday, Revolution Day, we present this work by one of Egypt’s greatest living poets.
I will receive your death
as the last wrong you committed against me.
I will not feel relief as you’d hoped.
And I will firmly believe
that you have denied me the opportunity
to diagnose the tumors
that lay dormant between us.
In the morning
I may be surprised by my puffed eyelids
and that the stoop in my back
has gotten sharper.
I would like to say, I don’t know the road to paradise… that my tongue, the people, and that man sitting contemplating the railway lines in a deep meditation nobody will ever know, existed. My house existed — in a place I am still seeking. It wasn’t in this village where I witnessed other children being born on the same blood-stained mattress I was born on in the same room to which the midwife regularly came, when she went away with the bit and took away the tongue. I saw myself searching for that old mattress stained with the blood of all those who had already come into the world so there would be another child round here. I saw myself not looking for a house but making the search for a house my way. So much blood dried like rust as each cut of the scalpel breached my skin, each cut of the scalpel piercing me, as I lay deadened, anaesthetized.I would have loved the time of the anaesthesia to lead me to the day you are no more, a day you can calculate for 50 dollars on the net.
I would like to say
I write about what I lost, about my vanished blood, about my laughter
frozen into a mask, about this young girl who was chased away because
she sighed next to the wheat dunes, that stuffed the young girls’ mouths with secrets, about this girl who was and is no more, about another one I saw spinning under the ceiling of the empty living room, her dress on fire, she calls to her master to save her, and standing naked in front of all those men. I say: I want neither father nor mother, nor to have them put on my road, or slipped into my story. Without them, I remain, and in spite of them all, I am:
I don’t know the road to paradise
I didn’t save you from hell
Sharia, that void, didn’t strike me,
I will not go to the one who has gone and will inevitably return
I wrote lines, licked the drops from the face
I said: she is of those whose past bears the present
she dashed along the wide avenue trying to cross
like me, you also are a traveller
without coyness, you come bearing that light,
or is it this myth that kills us
Shoot!
Kill, ash-dark bird!
Fall to earth on your feathers
that a wind blowing from the Sahara scatters
sand dunes, purple light
that you cross from where you are not,
this Sahara, our home.
There, two poles.
The coming will not come
visiting rather
he is your guest
suddenly shy when he sets foot,
vanishes enchanted
to where your awakening is
you, the sublime Magus
Amon
tell me, where you keep your remains
where can I find what leads me to them
You, the Thing, the Non-being
when they appeared, fire had covered the light
I write on your whereabouts
to meditate on you,
to envision
imagine
your shadow,
you, sublime creature
Be, a little, that I may see you
Cairo, imaginary date; written unthinkingly 31-11-2013
In honor of the first day of Ramadan, we present this work by one of Egypt’s great Muslim poets.
Oh Egypt, may your shadow be extended
and your soil be drenched
with the pure water of the Nile.
you are the sanctuary of my people
and the branching place of my family,
the playground of my age-mate
and the race course of my horses.
A country in which youth took off
the amulet of my childhood and
hung the scabbard of my sword on my shoulder .
I felt behind in it noble kinsmen
and neighbors whose image
comes back to me every morning.
I felt the sweetness of life after their
departure and said farewell to the soft flower of youth.
If I forgive and ignore your coldness,
How can I be free of the memory of you.
Your gaze is dear. The heart has no price.
Tell me to forget, have pity on me,
Or tell me to come.
Come drink this glass with me.
Poets Corner 