Nizar Qabbani
Nizar Qabbani Poems
In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
...
Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
...
Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
...
When a man is in love
how can he use old words?
Should a woman
desiring her lover
...
My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
...
My son places his paint box in front of me
and asks me to draw a bird for him.
Into the color gray I dip the brush
and draw a square with locks and bars.
...
Oh, my love
If you were at the level of my madness,
You would cast away your jewelry,
Sell all your bracelets,
...
Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been in need, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
...
'I have no power to change you
or explain your ways
Never believe a man can change a woman
Those men are pretenders
...
Love happened at last,
And we entered God's paradise,
Sliding
Under the skin of the water
...
When the moon is born in the east,
And the white rooftops drift asleep
Under the heaped-up light,
...
I do not resemble your other lovers, my lady
should another give you a cloud
I give you rain
...
Barada, oh father of all rivers
Oh, horse that races the days
Be, in our sad history, a prophet
...
The East receives my songs, some praise, some curse
To each of them my gratitude I bear
For I've avenged the blood of each slain woman
and haven offered her who is in fear.
...
If you are my friend...
Help me...to leave you
Or if you are my lover...
...
I wept until my tears were dry
I prayed until the candles flickered
I knelt until the floor creaked
...
In the blue harbor of your eyes
Blow rains of melodious lights,
Dizzy suns and sails
Painting their voyage to endlessness.
...
(A Letter to a Man)
My dear Master,
This is a letter from a stupid woman
Has a stupid woman before me, written to you?
...
My darling, I have much to say
Where o precious one shall I begin ?
All that is in you is princely
...
I conquer the world with words,
conquer the mother tongue,
verbs, nouns, syntax.
...
Nizar Qabbani Biography
Qabbani was revered by generations of Arabs for his sensual and romantic verse. His work was featured not only in his two dozen volumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, but in lyrics sung by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists who helped popularize his work. Through a lifetime of writing, Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. He earned a reputation for daring with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, "Childhood of a Breast," whose erotic and romantic themes broke from the conservative traditions of Arab literature. The suicide of his sister, who was unwilling to marry a man she did not love, had a profound effect on Qabbani. Thereafter, he expressed resentment of male chauvinism and often wrote from a woman's viewpoint and advocated social freedoms for women. He had lived in London since 1967 but the Syrian capital remained a powerful presence in his poems, most notably in "The Jasmine Scent of Damascus." After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he founded the Nizar Qabbani publishing house in London, and his became a powerful and eloquent voice of lament for Arab causes. Qabbani was a committed Arab nationalist and in recent years his poetry and other writings, including essays and journalism, had become more political. His writing also often fused themes of romantic and political despair. Qabbani's later poems included a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism. One couplet in particular -- "O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me" -- is sometimes quoted by Arabs as a kind of wry shorthand for their frustration with life under dictatorship. His second wife, Balqis al-Rawi, an Iraqi teacher whom he had met at a poetry recital in Baghdad, was killed in a bomb attack by pro-Iranian guerrillas in Beirut, where she was working for the cultural section of the Iraqi Ministry. Nizar Qabbani died in London of a heart attack at the age of 75.)
The Best Poem Of Nizar Qabbani
In The Summer
In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.
Translated by B. Frangieh And C. Brown
Submitted by Noele Aabye
Nizar Qabbani Comments
It was the Egyptian Abdulhaleem Hafiz the most popular singer in the Arab countries that time who popularized Nizar lyrics
can any one help me to do my research paper about the emotional language and terms of Nizar Qabbani in english
Nizar Qabbani Popularity
Nizar Qabbani Popularity
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6/7/2023 7:32:40 PM # 1.0.0.1113
O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me (Nizar Qabbani)