Saadi Youssef
Saadi Youssef Poems
At last in a half-furnished room near Nicosia
you came to deliver peace on your lips.
Is it only now, after five thousand miles,
that you've found the words?
...
When I enter the earth's nest
Contented
And glad,
My wings resting,
...
God save America
My home sweet home!
The French general who raised his tricolour
over Nagrat al-Salman where I was a prisoner thirty years ago . . .
...
How will I drag my feet to her now?
In which land will I see her
and on which street of what city
should I ask about her?
...
His house was exposed to dust from the street.
His garden, blooming with red carnations,
was open to dogs
and strange insects,
...
Winds that do not blow in the evening,
and winds that do not blow at dawn
have burdened me with a book of boughs.
I see my cry in the silence.
...
We stopped in five stations and did not leave a souvenir.
We did not shiver there, or get drunk, or strum a guitar.
Five rivers of sand on the guitar.
Five crosses made of silence:
...
She comes to me with a bowl of soup
when I am besieged by
fumes
of cheap arak.
...
It is not far than a night oblivious look
From the opening of " Umm Khaled " meadow.
You see it, at night, drenched in its blood.
Beit Leed Cabaret was your hidden bar of sand and turtle shield,
...
The girl who works in the warehouse
leaves her second-floor room.
She switches on the staircase light,
her face agitated in the glow,
...
That was not a country.
But it had all it needed
To imprint its image on us,
We the children of impossible clay.
...
Dream 1
On nights of torment and sorrow
its waters saturate the pillow
and it comes like the smell of moss
...
This Iraq will reach the ends of the graveyard.
It will bury its sons in open country
generation after generation,
and it will forgive its despot . . . .
...
Hold me, comfort me
The stones are nothing but pain tonight
Hold me to your breast
so that I ramble:
...
We did not name it so that it would become a city.
We came to it thirsty
starved
limping on blazing sands,
...
The trench with green water
is criss-crossed by twigs and birds,
by the shoes of tourists
and the ghosts of shipwrecked sailors . . .
...
A Roman Colony
We were Greeks
Our dwellings on the borders
Of the Arabian Desert;
...
The house plant
Bends under the heavy air.
On the table
Among a full ashtray and a tobacco bag
...
Naked
We are on our way to Allah
for shrouds we have only our blood;
for camphor, the eyeteeth of wolfish dogs.
...
A clock rang for the tenth time,
it rang ten o'clock,
it rang ten.
Across from the church tower
...
Saadi Youssef Biography
Saadi Yousef (Arabic: سعدي يوسف) (born 1934 near Basra, Iraq) is an Iraqi author, poet, journalist, publisher, and political activist.[1] He has published thirty volumes of poetry and seven books of prose. Saadi Yousef studied Arabic literature in Baghdad.[1] He was influenced by the free verse of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Shathel Taqa and Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayyati and was also involved in politics from an early age, leaving the country permanently in 1979 after Saddam Hussein's rise to power. At the time his work was heavily influenced by his socialist and anti-imperialist sympathies but has since also taken a more introspective, lyrical turn. He has also translated many well-known writers into Arabic, including Oktay Rifat, Melih Cevdet Anday, Garcia Lorca, Yiannis Ritsos, Walt Whitman and Constantine Cavafy. Since leaving Iraq, Yousef has lived in many countries, including Algeria, Lebanon, France, Greece, Cyprus, Yugoslavia and currently he resides in London. In 2004, the Al Owais Prize for poetry was given to Yousef but was controversially withdrawn after he criticized UAE ruler Sheikh Zayed bin al-Nahiyan. In 2007 Yousef participated in the PEN World Voices festival where he was interviewed by the Wild River Review.)
The Best Poem Of Saadi Youssef
Thank You Imru Ul-Qais
At last in a half-furnished room near Nicosia
you came to deliver peace on your lips.
Is it only now, after five thousand miles,
that you've found the words?
After moss filled your home
and the arrows were scattered in the sea.
Peace to a grove of figs.
Peace to this darkness.
Peace to a shell that hid its blood in wet sleep.
Peace to this ruin.
Like a spring between slim hands
slowly slipping off my covers
the way a farmer peels an apricot's soft stubble,
are you shining like silver while the world is lead?
All that surrounds me are shores.
Shall we start now?
Cities they speak of: there.
Hamlets, villages, capitals.
Our roads have diverged and crossed.
Shall we enter all exits here at once?
Shall we exit all entrances?
Our city is far
and far that eternity wounded in our eyelids.
I want your hands slim.
I won't live long, woman.
Drink me.
I won't live long, kill me.
Clouds fixed like mountains of chalk.
A swallow passes overhead
and reaches the church tower
at the end of the neighborhood.
There are three cedars there—
and I will draw them one day—
and my ashtray is full of snails.
The late morning is white
and the plant shakes
and the table shakes.
Is this the distant roar again?
Is this that blood rushing from joint to vein?
Peace to this morning bee visiting me.
When we came to measure the roads
we thought night was shorter
than Ibn Khaldun's Muqadima
and we said: North Africa is our cape ;
it will protect us from scorching heat and jagged cold.
Maybe we were young.
Maybe we came to eat the sour grapes
our parents avoided.
What wisdom lies in this top spinning?
Which death is easier?
(Note that we didn't even whisper,
'Which death is more beautiful?')
The cedar of the harbor and Samera
with the stupor of she who coiled
in a corner by her spring.
Young friends are fighting unto death
over their share of the ammunition box.
This way we go on as we were.
We learned, but what of this top spinning?
Thank you Imru ul-Qais, victim of murder.
The early sparrow sends a feather
to pomegranate blossoms.
A swallow flies aiming
for his centimeter of the street,
and the small balconies stand
in an infinity of solitude.
Morning ended when morning arrived.
So who will come,
and who will come?
And who will color the edge of the sheet?
Who will celebrate the touch of her fingers?
Who will celebrate the astonishment of morning?
Four boats in the whiteness of the wall.
Four boats in the bottom of the ocean.
The mirrors intervene.
I wanted a voice unlike any other.
Still I proceed in the hall of mirrors:
do I close my eyes now?
Do I ignore what my eyes ignore?
This road has gone on for too long
and the mirror still interferes.
Sometimes I disappear stumbling
in the water of small bays.
The Bosporus Strait shines before me,
in my hands grass
from the shifting bottom, and a shell.
The fish circle around, catching
butterflies, porcupines, stars
and eyes of drowned men.
Eternal silence killing me:
where is this sound coming from?
In a while I will resume my stumbling
among mirrored halls.
translated by: Khaled Mattawa
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9/19/2024 9:01:40 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Thanks for posting these poems. Such a great poet.