Joumana Haddad

Joumana Haddad Poems

Joumana Haddad Biography

Joumana Haddad was born in Lebanon in 1970. She is a poet, translator, journalist and teacher. She has worked at the Lebanese newspaper An Nahar since 1997. She speaks seven languages, including Spanish, and is preparing a doctorate thesis on the subject of poetic translation. Publications: The time of a dream, 1995; Invitation to a secret dinner, 1998; Abyss, 2000; I haven't sinned enough, anthology, 2004; The return of Lilith, 2004. She has published a number of works translated from Italian, French and Spanish, and has translated a number of Arab poets into French, Italian and Spanish. She is preparing an anthology of modern Lebanese poetry in Spanish. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Polish and English, and have been published in literary magazines such as Alhucema (Spain), Fornix (Peru), Hojas Sueltas (Colombia), Kalimat (Australia), Europe (France), Supérieur inconnu (France), as well as in two anthologies put together by Abdel Kader Janabi on modern Arab poetry and published in Paris: Le poème arabe moderne (the modern Arab poem) and Le verbe dévoilé (The uncovered word). She has interviewed recognized international authors, including José Saramago, Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, Yves Bonnefoy, Peter Handke, Wole Soyinka and Antonio Tabucchi.)

The Best Poem Of Joumana Haddad

I Don'T Remember

I don't remember
that I undressed in daylight
for a man
whose eyes are closed.

I don't remember
that I ran like saliva
and he was an unattainable desire,
that I was ravenous with hunger
and he was an impossible bed,
that I was the conqueror
and he a resilient city.

I don't remember, don't remember
that I conquered a man like a storm
and he was the open windows that faced my weakness,
that I pounced on him like a fever
and his hallucinations swallowed my tongue.

I knew men's bodies as travel
and my body as arrival and easy farewell.

I knew that men's hearts are pairs of hands,
and knew my heart was a promise of asphyxiation
that remains false even when it wins.

I knew that men's arrival was a gentle flood
and their departure a temporary ruin.
I knew how to forget them even as they stormed the dust of memory.

I had never known a man
whose heart professed rupture like a foretold catastrophe.

I never knew a man
who could turn me
from an Eve into woman.

Translated by Khaled Mattawa

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