Fadwa Tuqan Translations
Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.
Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.
Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.
Published by Palestine Today, Free Journal and Lokesh Tripathi
Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.
You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.
The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice—
until I perceived
your unique radiance.
Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.
Oh you! Oh you intimate and distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.
Published by This Week in Palestine, Arabic Literature (ArabLit.org) and Art-in-Society (Germany)
Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me
thanks to life’s cruelty.
The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only see you!
But I'll never know
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.
You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal this happiness,
leaving our hands empty.
Tomorrow at dawn you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.
Your scent—your scent!—contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth gulps up the lifegiving rain.
I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.
Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost—lost!—and nothing remains.
Published by This Week in Palestine and Hypercritic (read in Arabic by Souad Maddahi with my translation as a reference)
Labor Pains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tonight the wind wafts pollen through ruined fields and homes.
The earth shivers with love, with the agony of giving birth,
while the Invader spreads stories of submission and surrender.
O, Arab Aurora!
Tell the Usurper: childbirth’s a force beyond his ken
because a mother’s wracked body reveals a rent that inaugurates life,
a crack through which light dawns in an instant
as the blood’s rose blooms in the wound.
Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men
who did manual labor for bread.
When I saw him recently,
the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence
and I felt defeated.
But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said:
“Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound,
and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs.
This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters.
Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!”
Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen,
but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain.
At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back.
“Burn down his house!”
some commandant screamed,
“and slap his son in a prison cell!”
As our town’s military ruler later explained
this was necessary for law and order,
that is, an act of love, for peace!
Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house;
the coiled serpent completed its circle.
The bang at his door came with an ultimatum:
“Evacuate, damn it!'
So generous with their time, they said:
“You can have an hour, yes!”
Hamza threw open a window.
Face-to-face with the blazing sun, he yelled defiantly:
“Here in this house I and my children will live and die, for Palestine!”
Hamza's voice echoed over the hemorrhaging silence.
An hour later, with impeccable timing, Hanza’s house came crashing down
as its rooms were blown sky-high and its bricks and mortar burst,
till everything settled, burying a lifetime’s memories of labor, tears, and happier times.
Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down one of our town’s streets ...
Hamza-the-unextraordinary man who remained as he always was:
unshakable in his determination.
My translation follows one by Azfar Hussain and borrows a word here, a phrase there.
Biography of Fadwa Tuqan (aka Touqan or Toukan)
Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), called the "Grande Dame of Palestinian letters," is also known as "The Poet of Palestine." She is generally considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, named her “the mother of Palestinian poetry.”
Fadwa Tuqan was born into an affluent, literary family in Nablus in 1917. Her brother Ibrahim Tuqan was the most famous Palestinian poet of his day. She studied English literature at Oxford University and won several international literary prizes.
Tuqan began writing in traditional forms, but later became a pioneer of Arabic free verse. Her work often deals with feminine explorations of love and social protest.
After the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of 1948 she began to write about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, she also began writing patriotic poems.
Her autobiography "Difficult Journey?Mountainous Journey" was translated into English in 1990.
Keywords/Tags: Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine, Palestinian, Arabic, translation, earth, nature, culture, voice, writing, love, land, mother, labor, birth
Copyright © Michael Burch | Year Posted 2019
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