Wadih Saadeh

Wadih Saadeh Poems

Wadih Saadeh Biography

Wadih Sa'adah was born in the village of Shabtin, in northern Lebanon. In his own words he describes it as "a place were the people, fields, trees, rocks, birds and animals were one family. Nature was part of our being. The soil and the people were one. I grew up among farmers who were gentle and dour. I grew up among opposites - the sterility of rocks, the fertility of fields. The fields and rocks sometimes seemed to me to be the secret faces of the people I lived among in that village." When he was about twelve years old he moved to Beirut. here everything was much different from the village and depressed him, it was at this time that he began to seek solace in writing poetry. Perhaps it was through the medium of poetry that he was seeking all that he felt was lost. Though his soul was deeply rooted in his native land the war in Lebanon, a search for social justice and regard for human rights had him seeking a home with his family in many places - England, France, Cyprus, Greece, till finally he emigrated to Australia in 1988. Once again his own words best describe the pain of parting from this much loved soil of his birth. "Even so, that lost place remains firmly in my heart, for it is the place of my childhood. I know it is a paradise to which I can never return. When I write poetry, it is to keep this paradise alive in my mind. Poetry is not just an expression of the past, it is an act of creation, a dream of renewal, the only way for me to recreate myself as I would wish to be.")

The Best Poem Of Wadih Saadeh

Genesis

With what meagre space
remaining between his hands
he tried to reconstruct
a universe: with a tear,
he drew a star, a moon with a glance,
and with a single touch, a sun.
When he closed his eyes,
people commuted to their work
on the sidewalk of his eyelids.

Translated by: Sargon Boulus

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