Middle Eastern Poetry

*"The desire for life", Taisir Mahdi (Iraq), 2018 Stenin Press Photo Contest.

Political Prisoner. Behind a locked door. In a locked prison. In a locked desert. Of a locked homeland. A human being is kept in chains: none of us know him. The tortures might kick him. The cops might mock him. Even his companions might deny him. He might grow a beard to pass the time. The yellow journalists might vilify him. Not even mention his name. Or post it at night on Satan’s wall. But as he faces his executioners. Shackled in the darkness of his cell. United with the revolution which approaches like a mysterious song. He can destroy all the world’s prisons. And free us, before it is too late, from the legacy of fear. Though he is bound and wounded tonight. Tomorrow he will rise up; to set forth his history. - Al Azzawi

“I love autumn” she told me. And since that day, I’ve been falling. 

What is homeland? To hold on to your memory: that is homeland. — Mahmoud Darwish 

Even if the stars, the clouds, the wind and the sun do not see the murderers; when the birds are killed in the sky; and if the horizon turns a deaf ear to them; and the mountains and the rivers do not keep their memory; there ought to be at least one tree, who witnesses their death and writes their names into its roots. - Sherko Bekas

In the breast, knowledge is a lighted lantern; and on thy breast tis a coat of [nail] to ward off evil. - Rudaki *1914, Jewish scribes at the Tomb of Ezekiel near Babylon

Exile took us by surprise. A surgeon ready-scrubbed, he treated us with scalpels. Cleansed us of the dream tumours in the our organs, and pushed us into the last scene of a shadow theatre - in order that we perform for him our secondary roles. Who are we? Fury of some blind old man led by the thread of his loss; dice thrown on night’s page, leaving not an echo of their rolling. - Fawzi Karim

No friends but the mountains. *Kurdistan, Iraq, 1991. A Kurdish woman and her daughter fleeing war. Photograph by Chris Kutschera.

In order to draw blood from Majnun the surgeon sharpened his lancet. Majnun wept and said, “I fear that in place of blood out will flow longing for Layla.” - Nizami

White her skin. White her delicate body. Her hands, her wrists, her arms. White, her shoulders and her neck. Her thighs, white and her soft breasts. Her silk gloves white. Her shyness white. Her dress, veil and bed bride, white. Her passion white. Desire and muted sighs... Bedding cotton, white on her white bed. White nights of her carefree wedding. Her thighs and her stockings white. Her fluffy doves, her latest white car. Everything surrounds her in white. White as angels and spirits. Everyone who sees her worships her. Carries a white flag to announce her. But her love is cold as white snow. Her heart as harsh and diamond-hard, as the white jewels of her necklace. Her inner soul empty as albino cloud. Her intellect, her love, her mind: a blanched flatness of absent signs. A white page in a white notebook. - Jamal Sharbazheri