In the lips of speech there are lilies that bloom beside the cheeks of night; in his eyes glows the sadness of cities that are sketched into forgetfulness. Days have carved a calm path on the margin of the beginning. Nothingness often passes sticking out its tongue and in its stride there is a limp that glows in similitude. The cunning wind often leaves the doors of its beginnings open. The satisfaction of clouds comes late when prophets descend on the shores of meaning that was concealed in the interpretation.
The fire said to the desert: Woe to the thirsty, and a thirsty person said: Woe to the fire from my cruelty; the desert's eyes remained closed, absorbed in imagination. As hope was leaving the darkness of directions, he exited the window of his being into rings of fire, searching for the only surviving rose that was left by those arriving from the magnificence of tales.
Transients asked about the trace of questions, about their feet and the paths they traversed, and what husky singing meant during incendiary nights. His grand silence soothed him and massaged his paranoid, cruel soul. He dreamed of impending wars, deformed people, and fragmented hearts, so he woke up in a sweat all drenched in its weeping luminosity. He ignited his fingers from writing on the walls that store the manuscripts of those who have passed on. So he was a body. He shook off the dust of all the travelers to the first dream, searching for the first innocence, gradually pulling the emptiness of his days into his bed, paring the nails of nothingness, brushing its teeth, washing its face. He dressed in the elegance of names that chirped, and he scented the distance with a sadness of an imagination sprung from the eye of his sleepy heart.
He climbed his time in blind mirrors, he passed cruel things normally and tolerated its savage preying in his chest; he allowed combustion to consume every bit of him, he drew houses clearly, naked, and conscious of his long silence.
He said: "Let this night go on. Let songs rise in your hoarse voice. Let it issue songs from sleeping birds who dreamed of flying."
He said: "Let this urgent silence be evident in mirrors of chamomile followed by the anise of trembling that seeps into my chest, while the honey of your breasts flows in warmth that sees me at the altar of coughing; I hallucinate what is coming, but they don't arrive with their complete boredom to save me from a drowning that also hallucinates."
He said: "I sing to the far labyrinths and my blood is a labyrinth; the lemon gets lost in the tea so the bitterness of both passes my lips in darkness that refuses medication from which you are absent."
He said: "I grab forests around their waist and I make them dance to the heart's rhythm, and my heart's pulse runs in the wilds redolent of your perfume blending memories that never slumber."
He said: "I dream my days and carry them to peninsulas of madness in the veins of necks made of recitations and prayers."
So I got my name from an old souvenir and hid it, exiled in my silence.
He said: "I grabbed my sleep from the peeling wall of the house and I folded it; later I kept it between the covers of a book that speaks of aspiration."
He said: "I learned to dance from the curtains and from the heart of the light; I pulled it and offered it a glass of joy as usual, and I asked it to take my breath away and to depart out from the shadows."
He said: "I snatched my heart from its vacillations, and I grilled it on the fire of tranquility so that it would be done to a turn."
It Was Concealed in Interpretation
Yousef el Qedra
translated from the Arabic by Yasmin Snounu, Edward Morin, and Yasser Tabbaa
Listen to the poem read in the original Arabic by the author:
Yousef el Qedra is a young poet and playwright living in Gaza, Palestine. He holds a B.A. in Arabic literature from Al-Azhar University, Gaza. His poems have been published locally and internationally, in print and online. His four poetry collections are The Memory Is I and the Memory Is Forgotten (2001), Innocence of the Darkness (2004), You Might (2007), Her Tears Lament the Devastation (2011). He is a co-author of Outside the River's Path (2003). Since 2006, he has worked as a project coordinator of theatre and youth groups for the Cultural Free Thought Association in Gaza City, Occupied Palestine Territories. He is a founding member of the Gaza Poets Forum and the El-Bayader Cultural Forum. He teaches drama, literature, and writing. He has written, directed, and acted in several plays, and has given reading tours in the Middle East and Spain. His poems have been translated into English, French, Spanish, and Dutch.
Yasmin Snounu was born and has lived most of her life in Gaza City, Palestine. She has survived two attacks on Gaza, "CastLead" (December 2008 to January 2009) and "Pillar of Defense" (November 2012). She has worked with various non-governmental organizations in Gaza such as Palestine Save the Children, AMIDEAST, and the Union for Health Care Committees, managing educational and humanitarian projects since 2007. As a Fulbright scholar, she earned her master's degree from Eastern Michigan University in 2011, majoring in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language), a subject she has taught in Gaza universities for the last three years. She has had poems and translations published in American magazines and anthologies.
Edward Morin has graduate degrees in English from the University of Chicago and Loyola University Chicago. He has taught English at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Cincinnati. He has edited and, with Fang Dai and Dennis Ding, co-translated an anthology, The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry since the Cultural Revolution (1990), as well as a book-length manuscript of poems by the contemporary Chinese poet Cai Qijiao. Collections of his poems include Labor Day at Walden Pond (1997) and The Dust of Our City (1978). He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
Yasser Tabbaa has graduate degrees in anthropology and art history of the Middle East. He has curated antiquities in museums in two Arab countries and has also been a teaching and publishing scholar for over two decades at American Universities, including the University of Texas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, and New York University in Abu Dhabi. His books include The Translation of Islamic Art During the Sunni Revival (University of Washington Press, 2002) and Constructions of Power and Piety in Medieval Aleppo (Penn State University Press, 1996).
