Muhammad al-Fayturi

Muhammad al-Fayturi Poems

Muhammad al-Fayturi Biography

Muhammad al-Fayturi was born in Sudan (1930) in Al-Janina, on the western border of Sudan. His father was a Sufi sheikh of Libyan Bedouin extraction, while his mother was from a Gulf tribe which traced its lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Alexandria, where he spent his childhood, except for a brief spell during the Second World War when the family fled to the Egyptian countryside to escape the German bombing. He attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo until 1953 where he studied the Islamic sciences, philosophy and history, then attended Cairo University where he studied literature for two years. In 1953 he published his first collection of poems, entitled ‘Songs of Africa.’ Since then Al-Fayturi has published a number of other collections, including ‘Sunrise and Moonset’ and ‘Lover from Africa’. He has also lived and worked as a journalist and writer in a variety of different countries, including Lebanon, Libya, and Sudan itself. His poetry particularly draws on his experience as an African living amongst Arabs, dealing as it does with issues of race, class and colonialism, and it is also influenced to some extent by Sufi philosophy.)

The Best Poem Of Muhammad al-Fayturi

To Two Unknown Eyes

Mistress...
Should these enamored words chance to meet your eyes
Or pass between your lips
The forgive me; it was your eyes
In whose shade one evening I leaned resting
And snatched brief slumber
In their repose I caressed the stars and moon
I wove a boat of fancy out of petals
And laid down my tired soul
Gave to drink my thirsty lip
Quenched my eye's desire.

Mistress...
When we met by chance as strangers meet
My sorrow too was walking on the road
Bare, unveiled
With heavy tread
You were my sorrow.
Sadness and loss
Silence and regret
Were embracing a poet consumed by struggle.
For poetry, mistress, is a stranger in my land
Killed by emptiness and void
My spirit trembled saw you
I felt suddenly as if a dagger delved into my blood
Cleanse my heart, my mouth
Prostrated me with soiled brow and supplicating hands
In the shade of your sweet eyes.

Mistress...
If suddenly we meet
If my eyes see those your eyes
High-set, green, drowned in mist and rain
If on the road by another chance we meet
And what is chance but fate?
Then would I kiss the road, kiss it twice.

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