Monty AnNayef Poems

Oh tears of heart, of wondering thoughts and weeping soul,
Abandon me and never woes and pains recall.
Dreams withered. Words trilled. And fate did fall.
“Since time hath come, unleash thy soul, pray come with me.”
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“Farewell, farewell, ” my soul to thine
In grief has said, “farewell, my wine.”
Damn’d death! Thou hast stolen my love.
Thou left me down and took her `bove.
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When the shadows sleep, birds to their nests creep.
Nights come with pain, winter with heavy rain.
‘t was but pain what his death did to my brain.
Lo, beasts and men gather around to weep
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This is a parody of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The present poem carries out a similar style. I depend on English, world and Palestinian literature and biblical references as well as Holy Quran to build up the whole image of the poem.
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Lo the crippled wind; lo the frozen sun.
Coldness crept to a crying bird; darkness,
No less, under the night stillness, a victim
Had made of that lug’brious bird. What gentleness!
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This poem was written in Arabic by Dr. Salman Mahmoud, a university teacher at the Faculty of Architecture upon the painful massacre of Qana in 1996. After a couple of meetings I transferred these lines into Middle English, as I believe that the language of the Bible may have a stronger effect on well-educated readers, who the poem addresses.


Knowst not Qana, Beriz?
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I sat in the evening to witness the turning of the azure sky
Like a sorrowful tear shed on a rosy cheek from a drowsy eye.
Odor and nectar the wind carried from her unearthly residence:
Virginal is her smile; rejoicing are her eyes; frightening is her silence.
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Oh, Muse, whereof thou hast deserted me,
Thereof declare no muse of thee.
And now have chosen no one but SHE
As SHE has chos’n to stay with me:
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How dare I of departure tell?
And all my feelings could I kill?
Therefore, accursed be I, I tell,
Until is heard the swinging knell.
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Woe's to me; the mirth of my yeres I ashy make,
And my muse I, in spite of all the love, forsake.
Woe's to me to let Cupid my grene choyce desdayn:
Her lokes and eies so angelyke, albeit cause pain;
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