Iraqi poetry
Oct. 23rd, 2005 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eye_of_a_catWhere's the joy in sorting through a whole run of Modern Poetry in Translation unless you're going to read a couple of the poems?
Bulland al-Haydari, 'So That We Do Not Forget'
"On the seventeenth of March 1988 the Iraqi regime shelled the Kurdish town of Halabcha in Iraq with chemical weapons causing the deaths of thousands."
Even though my memory grew dim
Even though old age extinguished it
Even though the pus and blood dried by my eyes
I still muse about the house that was ours
Which used to hold out its arms to the light at dawn
A vow will bring it . . . or a dream
My house had two small windows
I remember they were smaller than eyes
Too small to let the sun cling to the old wood
Or cause universes to grow larger
The courtyard of my house was no bigger than the palm
Of a child
Wherever I walked I tripped over my shadow
My son taught me
The borders of the world in my house are boundless
He taught me to know myself in a drop of dew
He taught me that my house has a path leading to thousands of flower beds
That my house has a door
Trembling through one question and another
Through many nights
And says: come to me
You, coming from any space that was
From any time
He taught me to leave the door of the house wide open
So enter it, you, coming from any space and time
Enter it in safety.
How very small the house was
It was small as a heart
It was large as a heart
Rich with warmth and love
I remember we . . . were
Like the two windows of my house . . . like the door of the house
We sleep, our eyes full of green dreams
Of a mountain in Kurdistan
Yesterday
And while the eyes of all your children . . . Oh, my house
Oh, my country
They were swimming in sunlight
They looked like dew drops from all the narcissus blossoms
And from the flowers
Blew a poisonous wind
And from the eyes of an owl
Which poisoned all your children . . . Oh, my house . . . my country
Among those it killed . . . was my son
Among what it stole . . . was my shadow
The road to my house became a graveyard extending to thousands of graveyards
In Kurdistan
Nothing but death and the shadow of death
Not a narcissus dreaming of blooming in a flower bed
The villains didn't leave
Only the dead, the ashes of the dead, and the blackness of smoke
But my future
And the reckoning of the dead
And the blood of the slain will chase the face of Satan
From one mirror to another
From a thousand ages to a thousand ages
The rope will coil around the neck of the hangman
Kurdistan will curse your past
Baghdad will disavow your vice
And to the sweet land will return all the beds
Of narcissus and flowers
And my son will be reborn in all the children.
Fadhil al-Azzawi, from 'Every Morning The War Gets Up From Sleep'
Every morning the war gets up from sleep,
Afflicted with purifying fear,
Leaving its memory in the mud of history.
There is nothing between the beginning and the end,
Except for one who is wounded, and who crawls, leaning on his rifle;
Except for prisoners of war singing an oppositional song
Except for angels busily transporting this one or that one to Paradise,
Exhausted, working 24 hours a day
Without overtime pay, or even a word of thanks.
Every morning the war arrives,
A woman who places a kiss on the mouth of the man
Who has been waiting for her.
All is well.
The slain fill the wilderness and the guns howl forever.
The soldiers urinate on the tanks.
A corpse grows on all sides, which the crowds enter, shouting.
A corpse wearing a clown's suit at a soiree
Cries to an enemy, who is squatting on a hillock
With a pair of binoculars in his hands
Watching a caravan of desert Arabs
Coming from another, distant, Qadisiyya.
O thou enemy! O thou enemy!
Come and spend the night with us,
For perhaps tomorrow we'll die together.
[Qadisiyya was the site of a seventh-century battle between Arab and Persian armies that led to the Arab conquest of Persia. According to the footnote, the 1980 Iran-Iraq war was known as 'Saddam's Qadisiyya'.]
Bulland al-Haydari, 'So That We Do Not Forget'
"On the seventeenth of March 1988 the Iraqi regime shelled the Kurdish town of Halabcha in Iraq with chemical weapons causing the deaths of thousands."
Even though my memory grew dim
Even though old age extinguished it
Even though the pus and blood dried by my eyes
I still muse about the house that was ours
Which used to hold out its arms to the light at dawn
A vow will bring it . . . or a dream
My house had two small windows
I remember they were smaller than eyes
Too small to let the sun cling to the old wood
Or cause universes to grow larger
The courtyard of my house was no bigger than the palm
Of a child
Wherever I walked I tripped over my shadow
My son taught me
The borders of the world in my house are boundless
He taught me to know myself in a drop of dew
He taught me that my house has a path leading to thousands of flower beds
That my house has a door
Trembling through one question and another
Through many nights
And says: come to me
You, coming from any space that was
From any time
He taught me to leave the door of the house wide open
So enter it, you, coming from any space and time
Enter it in safety.
How very small the house was
It was small as a heart
It was large as a heart
Rich with warmth and love
I remember we . . . were
Like the two windows of my house . . . like the door of the house
We sleep, our eyes full of green dreams
Of a mountain in Kurdistan
Yesterday
And while the eyes of all your children . . . Oh, my house
Oh, my country
They were swimming in sunlight
They looked like dew drops from all the narcissus blossoms
And from the flowers
Blew a poisonous wind
And from the eyes of an owl
Which poisoned all your children . . . Oh, my house . . . my country
Among those it killed . . . was my son
Among what it stole . . . was my shadow
The road to my house became a graveyard extending to thousands of graveyards
In Kurdistan
Nothing but death and the shadow of death
Not a narcissus dreaming of blooming in a flower bed
The villains didn't leave
Only the dead, the ashes of the dead, and the blackness of smoke
But my future
And the reckoning of the dead
And the blood of the slain will chase the face of Satan
From one mirror to another
From a thousand ages to a thousand ages
The rope will coil around the neck of the hangman
Kurdistan will curse your past
Baghdad will disavow your vice
And to the sweet land will return all the beds
Of narcissus and flowers
And my son will be reborn in all the children.
Fadhil al-Azzawi, from 'Every Morning The War Gets Up From Sleep'
Every morning the war gets up from sleep,
Afflicted with purifying fear,
Leaving its memory in the mud of history.
There is nothing between the beginning and the end,
Except for one who is wounded, and who crawls, leaning on his rifle;
Except for prisoners of war singing an oppositional song
Except for angels busily transporting this one or that one to Paradise,
Exhausted, working 24 hours a day
Without overtime pay, or even a word of thanks.
Every morning the war arrives,
A woman who places a kiss on the mouth of the man
Who has been waiting for her.
All is well.
The slain fill the wilderness and the guns howl forever.
The soldiers urinate on the tanks.
A corpse grows on all sides, which the crowds enter, shouting.
A corpse wearing a clown's suit at a soiree
Cries to an enemy, who is squatting on a hillock
With a pair of binoculars in his hands
Watching a caravan of desert Arabs
Coming from another, distant, Qadisiyya.
O thou enemy! O thou enemy!
Come and spend the night with us,
For perhaps tomorrow we'll die together.
[Qadisiyya was the site of a seventh-century battle between Arab and Persian armies that led to the Arab conquest of Persia. According to the footnote, the 1980 Iran-Iraq war was known as 'Saddam's Qadisiyya'.]
