how to tell you that the sun is setting yes
each day of our lives to the east of your empires
languages rife with swearwords are peerless
our slang is fairly dirty
stained with grease and oil
speak white
be at ease within your words
we’re a bitter people
yet let’s not reproach anyone
for exercising a monopoly
over the correctness of language
using Longfellow’s accent
and in Shakespeare’s sweet tongue
speak a French that is pure and atrociously white
like in Vietnam like in the Congo
speak an impeccable German
a yellow star between your teeth
speak Russian speak call to order speak repression
speak white
it’s a universal language
we were born to understand it
with its teargas words
its truncheon words
speak white
tell us again about Freedom and Democracy
we know that liberty is a black word
just like misery is black
just like the blood mixing with dust in the streets of Algiers or Little Rock
speak white
take turns doing it from Westminster to Washington
speak white like on Wall Street
white like in Watts
be civilized
and listen good when we speak about circumstances
when you lot politely ask us
how do you do
and you can hear us tell you
we’re doing all right
we’re doing fine
we
are not alone
we know
that we’re not alone
Translated from French by André Naffis-Sahely
MAHMOUD DARWISH
from A State of Siege
In a land preparing for its dawn,
in a while
the planets will sleep in the language of poetry.
In a while
we will bid this hard road farewell,
and ask: Where shall we begin?
In a while
we will warn the young mountain daffodils
their beauty will be eclipsed when our young women pass by.
*
I raise a glass
to those who share my vision
of a butterfly’s joyful iridescence
in this interminable tunnel of night.
*
I raise a glass
to the one who shares a glass with me
in the pitch black of this night,
a night so thick we’re both in the dark.
I raise a glass to my ghost.
*
Peace for the traveller on the other side
is to hear a traveller talking to himself.
Peace is the sound of a dove in flight
heard by two strangers standing together.
*
Peace is the longing of two enemies
to be left to themselves till they die of boredom.
Peace is two lovers
swimming in moonlight.
*
Peace is the apology of the strong
to the weak,
agreeing strength lies in vision.
Peace is the disarming of arms
before beauty —
iron turns to rust when left out in the dew.
*
Peace means a full and honest confession
of what was done to the ghost of the murdered.
to plan all the crops we will plant.
*
Peace is the anguish
in the music of Andalusia
weeping from the heart of a guitar.
*
Peace is an elegy said over a young man
whose heart’s been torn open
by neither bullet nor bomb,
but the beauty-spot of his beloved.
*
Peace sings of life — here, in the midst of life,
wind running free through fields ripe with wheat.
Ramallah, 2002
Translated from Arabic by Sarah Maguire and Sabry Hafez
ABDELLATIF LABI
from Letter to My Friends Overseas
Kind friends
usually when I write
I barely have the time
to feel your warmth
and sit amongst you
(a cigarette in my lips, the same tune in my head)
and must leave you
before I’ve reached the end of the page
You see, here they ration out
even the stationery
The request form that I fill
only allows correspondence
between the prisoner
and his family
They’ll never understand
that family to me
doesn’t mean ancestry
or heredity
or villages or IDs
I’ve never been able to estimate
the size of my family
It stretches out
as far the sunrise in our eyes
as far as our newly born continent
tears down the walls erected inside us
Friends
I’ve got so much to tell you:
it’s just that usually
I keep my mouth shut not wanting to risk
the censors putting a stop
to these acts of presence
in fact I censor myself
fearing the briefness of my answers
might twist my thoughts
out of shape for you
or warp what this humble letter
this gradual rediscovery of ourselves
these simultaneously peaceful upsetting accounts
of the other through dialogue
have to say
Friends
I grow more convinced
that the poem
can only ever be
a dialogue
made of live flesh and sound
that stares you straight in the eyes
even if the poem has to cross
the cold wastes of distance
to finally reach you
in the creases created by absence
This is why
you no longer hear me speaking alone
in the trances of exorcism
in my tragic haemorrhages
as I extricate myself from this quagmire
and call out to the earthquake survivors
to heap my distress calls and curses on them
A long time ago
I wrote those poems
about the infernos of solitude
about my desperate climb back to my fellow human beings
and I’m not quite ready to disown them
those bitter fruits
of the murderous twilight
where I struggled
as I sought the roots
of a voice I knew was my own
of a human face that reflected
the exact image of my truth
Those violent poems were healthy
and without them
maybe my voice
would be empty today
devoid of what gave it
its vital intensity
But the problem
is that I can’t write like that any more
Nowadays
my life’s taken a different path
and so has my style
I’m not alone any more
My ordeal has placed me
on the road of encounters
My body has learned
to be pushed to the limits and curl up
like a scalding hot steel plate
to endure the lacerations
and to resist
to translate humiliation and pain
into their literal opposites
and inside this lead-sealed arena
where they condemned me to shuffle
for ten whole years
I have started to dig
entire tunnels
and underground passages
even into my veins
even into my mind’s vital parts
and I heard other people were digging
in all the directions towards which
I was piercing through my aphasia
until the day when the first hand broke through
and I felt the willowy vines of embraces
Translated from French by André Naffis-Sahely
VALDEMAR KALININ
And a Romani Set Off
Once upon a time, many thousands of years ago, all sorts of people lived in the Garden of Eden. It was the most beautiful garden. Do you know what I mean by Paradise? It’s a sophisticated sort of place where truthful people lived in great comfort. They worked hard and had plenty of everything.
Now, one day, believing his people were ready for it, God decided to give them all their own countries and scatter them to the four corners of the earth. He announced a day on which they should present themselves before him to claim their title deeds bearing God’s own seal. But since, as you know, God lives in inaccessible light, it was his angels who dealt with people.
On the appointed day, the weather was exceptionally lovely, the morning was warm and the birds were singing. Ah, if only we knew what those birds looked like and the sound of their song …
Anyway, the Romani man was so soundly asleep he overslept his appointment. One can only imagine the profound sleep induced by that Garden, shadowed as it must have been by sweetly scented flowers and lulled by the quiet murmuring of distant streams. Suddenly, he was abruptly woken by the sound of joyful singing nearby; indeed, it was only when some Gadzo tripped over him that he sat up.
“Why are you all so happy?” he asked.
“Because I was given my land and I am going to cultivate it. Hurry up, Rom! Otherwise you might be given barren land!” and he hurried on his way.
The Rom set off to the Paradise Palace. On his way, he met different Gadze neighbors who told him the good news of their newly inherited land. The Rom realized that by the time he reached the Palace, there’d be nothing left for him, so decided it would be better not to ask. When he arrived at the Palace, everyone was busy discussing the technicalities of settling their lands and dividing up the countries with the Angels. The Senior Angel asked the Rom what he wanted.
“Nothing special,” said the Rom, “I just want to thank God and his Angels for this wonderful life in the Garden of Eden.”
“But what country would you like?” asked the Angel.
“I’m happy to stay here,” said the Rom. “Let me once again express my gratitude on behalf of all these people. However, there is one small thing: maybe you would let me visit my neighbors from time to time in their new countries?”
“Because you are the only one who asked God for nothing, you are given the right to wander the face of the earth, to visit all its countries and stay there as long as you like,” replied the Angel.
The Romani thanked the Angel and set off on a long journey across the countries of his neighbors. And that is why he continues to roam to this day.
SOUÉLOUM DIAGHO
Exile gnaws at me
Exile gnaws at me, the world’s negligence irks me.
So distant from my memories, my people fight, their eyes tanned by the sun, their gazes fixed on the desert encampments, the perfume of nostalgia weighs down my thoughts, pain desiccates my heart, like a flower you try to keep alive despite the lack of its mother’s sap. Worries have carved deep grooves into my brow, like the ripples the wind leaves on the sand-dunes. Miracles and equality lie far from our valleys, what remains is the hardest of ordeals, like travelling along cliff-edges, or enduring the suave bitterness that lingers in the mouth of an abandoned invalid. Hundreds of steps are left on the journey to where the demon first emerged, the demon who cast a shadow over nomadic life, like the darkness swallows the light of day. This journey isn’t over, brothers, anguish binds us, fear strips us naked, like dead leaves torn during a savage storm. Pain is my mantle, I dance in the flames that devour my dreams before they surge out of my soul. So many tears have been shed to water the plant that refuses to grow. I searched through endless universes for answers to questions put to me, yet nothing could soothe my sorrow or stifle the groans of my overwhelming journey, nothing except for promises written in air which lingered unsolved. The voices of boys and girls intertwined with the wind lost themselves in oblivion, words of praise blended with the perfume of warriors brandishing their swords are now nothing but a nightmare. Only fragments of poetic license remain to keep a few memories alive. Life is nothing but a mirage, my friends, nothing is absolute except for the face of the all-powerful master.
Translated from French by André Naffis-Sahely
AHMATJAN OSMAN
Uyghurland, the Farthest Exile
In my early isolation, I’d often withdraw
homeward into my heart. Then, as my grief
subsided, my eyes would quickly close
not giving me a chance
to say, “I am alone…”
After days of staring
at lit candles (the flame
no longer burns in the corner
of the old house in the land of memory)
a strange feeling woke me up
to the time of searching
for the birds
who pronounced the words of the Wandering Angel
between lines of buried books,
“Uyghurland,
the farthest exile!”
Now I wish to forget
what emerged from the tongues of birds
and accept a land of darkness
where my feet bleed. To stop
thinking of the ancient things I’ve heard
for the voices have shifted direction in me
so that am I indeed what the birds pronounced?
Here, the mysterious moon
falls, heavy twilight on my shut eyes
as if embracing a stray thought
in the springtime of reincarnation
“Come towards me,” the candle beckons,
“you must leave this extinguished land
to shout freely with a vital voice,
‘Uyghurland!’”
From within the folds of speech
I recovered the ancient sun.
Perhaps time
was measure without day
as it leapt towards us like a wolf
for no reason
impossible to comprehend
from the moment we arrived here
the moment I questioned myself,
“What land could that be?”
I listen to the cries of suffering there
far away, waking inside me a nostalgic distance
like the caws of crows
on bare branches in a cemetery.
Thus the widening sea
of exile within me
where the guardian birds
signal the next island.
Perhaps the immobile winds around you
O distant outliers
were a fated certainty, a futility
in the depths of death and of being
purely one’s self,
one’s pure self.
Whatever space the great birds fly through
I wake beneath the wings
of the famous ode
the place I am in, in
silence, disturbed
I watch
everything revolve around me
in darkness…
The body searches
circles like a ghost in blue fog
to discern the direction of what was foretold
as suffering
&n
bsp; and form a dream
it can reside in
and name.
Later in sorrow, the birds
would often withdraw
homeward into my heart. Their eyes,
as my thoughts
subsided, would quickly close
not giving me a chance to say,
“That day
was the most beautiful day.”
O the terror —
as the bells of your footsteps break
at the border of each country,
and the echo
of sun shines through a window
onto a woman’s rusted bosom —
that repeats around you without disruption,
“Uyghurland,
the farthest exile!”
Translated from Uyghur by Jeffrey Yang
KAJAL AHMAD
Birds
According to the latest classification, Kurds
now belong to a species of bird
which is why, across the torn, yellowing pages
of history, they are nomads spotted by their caravans.
Yes, Kurds are birds! And even when
there’s nowhere left, no refuge for their pain,
they turn to the illusion of travelling
between the warm and the cold climes
of their homeland. So naturally,
I don’t think it strange that Kurds can fly.
They go from country to country
and still never realise their dreams of settling,
of forming a colony. They build no nests
and not even on their final landing
do they visit Mewlana to enquire of his health,
or bow down to the dust in the gentle wind, like Nali.
Translated from Kurdish by Choman Hardi and Mimi Khalvati
OMNATH POKHAREL
from The Short-Lived Trek
The problem in Bhutan had started in a rather unique way. The slight misunderstanding in the multi-lingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic country between the people’s demand for respect for human rights and the government’s refusal to grant them should have been resolved with level-headedness. Nevertheless, it had ultimately led to the abuse of the law, while a great deal of land had been appropriated by a handful of opportunists. That’s why many people, like Muktinath, are compelled to sneak into their own land at night, carrying a heavy burden of fear and apprehension.