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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
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The Stranger and the Photographer
By: Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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Sunshine in his eyes
A smile on his face
Dust on his hair
And on his eyebrows
Like a lone ranger
From outer space
Who crossed the desert
Riding the wind,
Not a horse!
And after his journey,
To rest his head,
He found a place.
Everyone was talking
Laughing and joking
And with their laughter
Filling the space
But alone he was sitting,
Drinking and eating,
In utter silence,
Minding noone else.
Like lightning and thunder,
On a hot summer day;
She suddenly comes,
To shatter his silence,
And cross his way,
"I'd like to take a picture,"
She said with a smile,
"Of you, If I may!"
Waited for no answer,
Took a picture,
"Thank you!" She said,
And went away.
Then turned around
And said with a sway:
Mind you stranger!
If destiny wants,
She'll have her way,
Your path and my path,
Will cross again,
Somehow, somewhere, someday!
******
Inaam 1993
USA
http://goldenpoems.wetpaint.com
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2013
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
Life
Arabic Poem by: Riyadh Al-Ghareeb*
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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It was not his idea
He did not wave to the sundown of his life
Quite simply, he let life go by
He was the only one who did not care about the war
Rather, he listened to music
And wrote poems
While
Shells were falling all around him..
Not once, he thought about death
Nor he paid attention to getting old in the mirror
All that he cared about
Was a woman he imagined loving him
And waiting for someone who may come back
Carrying a small snippet
Emblazoned with the script
From extreme madness “
To... “
He lived in his illusion
Even as he became a poet.
When his life was clotting
And nightfall of life was waving to him
He realized
All that was going on around him
Was not his choice
And the life he encountered
Was not his life..
So,
He tried to get rid of his blue beard
And bitter tears
Near the nearest war
of his country’s
A country that has become
Addicted to wars.
He let his hair grow long
His dark skinned face
Was on the verge of revealing nightly starvation
At noontime, his children were panting
After a lifeless Dinar..
His final poem
Was laden with the grief of the world
But that world did not care about what was going on..
In his only room
The smell of onions mixed
With the smell of the empty pots;
Hanging onions
Was the most beautiful memory in a country
Without memory
It's his life
That he wanted to be
A part of his ration card,
His birth record
And the rest of his poems.
“Woe to the ruin!”
He said
Removing the dust from a painting of him
Made, in a stolen moment,
By a painter who died two wars ago.
He was laughing
And holding a drink with an innocent cheer
As, above his head, birds in the somber colors of the sky were flying
Suggesting the he was important
And his life was of interest to others.
He flicked his tears
And on the tile of his room floor
He saw wars reproduce,
He saw his children go to a new war
He saw his wife coughing her years
Painful looks
And said to himself
That life
Was not my idea
It is a naive game.
However
Let me keep on this road
At the end, I may find paper
For my friends to wrap me with
Like the oldest statue
Standing on the way of passers-by
And the country!!!!!!
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Translated by: Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi
USA
* Riadh Al-Ghareeb is a poet from Iraq
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2014
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
The Martyr Girl
Arabic Poem by: Jasem Al-Khafaji*
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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In your absence,
Dreariness, in every class,
Has been the prayer of the break..
Every teacher calls your name,
His voice falls slaughtered, in pain, on his lips..
In every standing and every sitting,
Your class condoles with your desk..
Without you there, the schoolyard feels empty
The bell sounds strangled as it tolls for you..
Oh, grief of all schools!
Oh, weariness of all lessons!
Too young to be gone..
Your mother wished to see you a bride..
Vacant was your stand in the lines and rows
For the flag ceremony
And, silently,
The flag was raised..
The blackboard is missing your words
Saddened with no words to spell
“Dar” … “Door”
Oh, grief!
When your braid caught fire,
The kids tried to put it off with your bookcase
Their hands were too small to carry water..
May God help your mother..
Your mother, who, in her grief, turned white,
Like daylight upon your coffin
Your mother, who, with slaps of grief,
Drew skipping squares on her cheeks
Your mother, who raised your hand in prayer to God
Your mother, who used to come to get you,
At the end of the school day
Your mother, who, not even once,
Received a teacher’s note complaining about you
Your mother, who is wrapping ribbons
Around your pictures
In madness after you
God help your mother, who, in her grief,
Turned white like daylight upon your coffin..
O God, May all bombs be paralyzed,
And all blasts be blinded!
----------------------------------------
* Jasem Al-Khafaji is a poet from Iraq,
The poem is in Iraqi folks spoken dialect
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2014
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
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Homelands
Arabic poem by: Adel Said*
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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At the end of the line I stand
As should a professional homeless do
Exactly at the end of the line
Before the committee on homelands distribution
Among those who fall in the overflow
Over the needs and capacity of time, place,
Maps,
Population records,
And cemeteries.
At the end of the line I stand
Hanging like a teardrop in a funeral
Collecting what have fallen of my years,
My fables
And my extinct dreams,
In the bundle of my childhood that missed her doll
And my deferred share of my mother’s tenderness.
I have a flavor the midwife failed to sever
With the umbilical cord
In my heart, there is still a nursery rhyme
About a duck swimming in a river
And a songs about a fair maiden’s tear dripped down with kohl
And my fingers are still trembling
In fear of the lesson and the swish of the teacher’s ruler.
I have in the piggy bank of my life
Volumes about hunger and wars of social classes
Burned by the fascists
Who also snuffed out the tears of forbidden love.
I have in the piggy bank of my life
Dates I saved of palm tree’s yearning for the land
And some palm pollen dust still traveling in my lungs.
I have no signs of prophecy on my forehead
And no halos of saints
But my homeland that’s sitting there
Amidst the committee on the homelands distribution
Will recognize me
And I'm in the queue
I will not compete with the homeless comrades
For their homelands
And will not accept that illustrious one on the right
And not that opulent one on the left
I’ll accept only that one,
That one whose head is a palm tree
And whose arms are two rivers.
- You , O Mister!
You who was at the end of the line,
You haven’t been recognized
By any of the homelands gathered in the committee,
The exiles snuffed out your flavor
And withered your songs;
Despite the high level of adoration in you
No homeland on earth
Understands your language.
- Even that one? !
- Even that one ..
And out of pity
We decided to grant you a berth,
A berth that will never come to an end
You will waste on it
All that’s left in your lifetime’s piggy bank
Of tears,
Of dreams loitering outside the fence of life
And of years flying, like neglected pieces of paper,
Out of the window of history!
===========
Translated by: Em. Prof. Inaam al-Hashimi
USA
* Adel Said is a poet from Iraq who resides in Norway
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2013
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
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Ousted by None but the Night
Arabic Poem by: Adnan Abu Andalus*
Translated by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_n_silk)
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The dusty street is bare
Darkness there and the horizon
As if, the night was sprinkling fear
Nothing there
But a policeman followed like a ghost
A street cat
A wailing ambulance
All where time is open for running
Endlessly
Who would stroll in the range of bullets?
To come back in the morrow like a spinning top
Without a head?
Who would walk alone?
And fly off with the meekness of the past
In Baghdad’s night?
Who would believe that AlZawraa held her lungs
And ousted the breath of her patrons?
And that “Abu Nawas” replaced
His last glass of wine
With a cup of black coffee?
Shahriar uttered it
To protest shampoo ads!
Scheherazade wore the veil
Bad boys of the night
Shunned flirting with girls
In the Girls Street.
______
Translated December, 2012
By: Em. Prof. Inam Al-Hashimi
USA
* Adnan Abu Andalus is a poet from Iraq
from his poetry collection “The Smell of Doomsday”
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1 Knowing some of the history of ancient Baghdad may be helpful in facilitating better understanding of the poem. Baghdad was famous as the center place of the “Arabian nights” or the "Thousand and One Nights Tales" where Scheherazade, night after night, told the king Shahryar a different tale of romance and adventure to keep him from killing her in the morning.. Ancient Baghdad, nicknamed "AlZawra’a", was known for receiving, with open arms. night-patrons in joy and without fear. The poem refers to the glamorous past of Baghdad in comparison with the grim and gloomy nights of modern Baghdad after the war. In doing so, the poem mentions some symbols of the past and historical figures from old Baghdad and the Golden Age of the caliph Haroun al-Rashid (died 809 AD), and presents them in images contrary to their characters. Such figures include the licentious poet “Abu Nuwas" who wouldn’t recite poetry without being drunk. And the afore mentioned Scheherazade and Shahryar.
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Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2013
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
Concerto of the Enchanting Night
Arabic Poem by: Fadhil Aziz Farman *
Translated Into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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You suggest the songs
And leave me deep
In the splendor of the rhythm and melody.
Drag my day out of the dream to wakefulness
I have not known
But the philosophy of dreams
In all my days.
You suggest the songs
And leave me floating in a wave of fragrance
Showered down By Lynol Ritchie
With his love songs
Or by Yanni with his tunes.
And dance
Do the tango
Do the waltz
Do the ballet or the jerk dance
Dance as you please
Or spin around the Earth-pole,
O symbol of amazing taste,
Rouser of lightning in the sky,
And crown of all beauties.
Here I am intoxicated
By the melody pulsating in your figure
And by the bashful roses
On your cheeks,
O sweet wine in my chalice and my vats.
You suggest the songs
And at the end of the round
Put your head on my chest,
O child of my poems,
And listen to my heart singing them
With the virgin tears of joy
Flowing down the violin’s cheek.
You suggest the songs
You suggest the melody
And hint the sweet words
They’ll come to you
Then hold me to your chest like a child.
I will need your ear
To whisper to you
All that baffles my heart
And my tongue
You suggest the songs
And strew them
Such as roses
On the desert of my life.
What remains for us
Of all our years,
But joy
Strewn like roses
And like dew
On the seconds?
*********
Translated by Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi
USA
* Fadhil Aziz Farman is a poet from Iraq
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The original poem in Arabic https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202962662165969&set=p.10202962662165969&type=1&theater
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2014
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
Final Wishes of a Poet
Arabic poem By: Rukn-al-Din Yunus
Translated into English By:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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(Part 1 of 3)
Lend me a handful of earth
So that I may make you a statue
You have not seen the like before
In your dreams.
Lend me a breath of spring
I’ll paint you cities, seashores
And passionate rendezvous.
Lend me some of your crazy letters
And I will dispatch couriers
To deliver them to gardens
And send elegantly dressed devotees
With a touch of sadness
To receive them from the gardens
And read them to the river.
Lend me some of the words
Escaping from under your hat,
Which has no resemblance to Pablo Neruda’s,
To write you an epic
Spelled out by tyrants
Every night
To cry their own fates in the morning.
Lend me an evening you could spare
To romp through virtual streets
Named after living poets
From different generations
Wherein a river of music goes over the heads of passersby
Drowning all in ageless glamour.
Lend me the rest of the golden letters
In your pocket
To disperse them over the outskirts of my words
And the lanterns of my dreams
To light up what’s left of the opaque sentences
In the imagination of the painter
And the wisdom of the poet
Who is crazed about the clay
On the banks of the Hilla River.
(Part 2 of 3)
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I'll die tonight...
O my dear wife!
I’ve never liked farewell ceremonies
In my life
So let things be normal and quiet.
Forgive me! I will not kiss you tonight
Just lie down beside me on the bed
For now.
Don’t tell the boys about my no-return journey
Don’t let the girls cry with you
Especially the married one
And the little one
The middle one as well.
Let everything be as ordained for me
By those I don’t know
All I know for sure
I will die tonight.
How? ..... I do not know!
How? ..... I do not know!
At what time? …. The mind of the poet is unable to tell.
I will die my dear wife
But....
Don’t forget to feed the dog “Yoyo” early in the morning.
Don’t neglect spraying the garden
First in the morning
Even if it was time for the funeral.
And don’t forget the seven o'clock news
Listen to it for the sake of your love for me
They always mention news of the lost homeland.
Don’t forget ever....
The chicken feed
I’d like to hear
The cock’s crow every morning in my grave.
And hide the empty wine bottles
Out of the sight of mourners...
I don’t want them to accuse poets of infidelity.
And if they ask you
What was with him before he died?
Just tell them:
He forgot to live!
(Part 3 of 3)
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Before I died
My wife made me a clay statue
And cried at it
She and her five daughters did.
But my two sons took no notice
Of their mother crying
Nor of their sisters wearing black
But, rather,
They seized the opportunity
And went out to join their peers
In a football game!
Before I died
My friends vied
And jostled in front of
Mercenary and non-mercenary newspapers’ buildings
Led by “Riyadh Alghareeb”
To provide their elegies for my immortal soul
Which reminds them of their own
As they greet death.
And since that day
I am holding on to my soul
Lest it slips away
In a moment
Of inattention
From me
The poet
Rukn al-Din Yunus
***
Translated by: Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi
USA
November 2013
* Rukn-al-Din Yunus is a poet from Iraq
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2013
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
The Needle’s House
Waiting For the Third Time Out
Arabic Poem by: Salah Hassan *
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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Between me and me there is a civil war!
It’s my war alone;
I will wash away the speech
And cross the language barrier
I will resign from the verbal job
And write my name in the manuscript of annihilation
I will describe you, O war
O my war!
From the skies of drought and indifference
I will look down on the atlas of blood
With a bird’s eye look
As a hawk breathing storms
Because the hot red color
Covers the map.
My health is a candle
But I am the wind’s begotten child
The truth is not free
The error is not a slave
I will get out of the house of the needle
To free the horizon of its windows
And leave the thunder blabbering
Till the Euphrates gets flooded
And drown the Ziggurat and the gods.
This is my nation
It’s not a part of the world
But rather a transient in it
Its memory is a cemetery
It is a stranger to happiness
It doesn’t dream
As it doesn’t sleep
And if it did
It would
In a coffin.
I will describe you, O war!
O my war!
I will write you
I will paint you
I will mummify you
I will translate you
I will use you to lure traders,
Odepians,
Psychopaths
And schizophrenics.
So that you will be all done;
I want you to get out of my language
So I can write
A text free of terror.
That’s the continuous present...
Kings climb the Ziggurat
And steal the myth of creation
And the Sumerian language;
Soldiers throw their helmets at the unseen
That’s the continuous present...
Lightning leads the floods
to processions of the weary
Running darkness
tracks the bitter body and the memory.
I will describe you, Oh war!
O my war!
With black writing
or purple writing;
I will dig your mine fields
With Cuneiform characters
Or with the bones of your victims;
Here are my clay tablets
They are all chipped;
Not your gods
Not your kings
Not your clerics
And not your floods
Were able to wipe off the blood of them
It’s a ruined language
But it breaths through its wound.
We die, and the war doesn’t stop;
Our sons walk to it
And it stands on their shadows;
Our sons die
Yet the war doesn’t stop;
Their sons walk to it
And it doesn’t stop
Their sons walk to it
And it doesn’t stop
And their sons walk to it
And it doesn’t stop.
***
Translated by :
Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi
USA
*Salah Hassan is an Iraqi poet
http://www.alnoor.se/article.asp?id=212005
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2013
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
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Biography of A Dream
Arabic Poem by: Abdulsadah Al-Basri
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
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At...
The end of the first decade
Of the twentieth century
The sun bathed in my father’s eyes
He kept flirting with her
And flirting..
to draw a dream on her silken rays
A dream accompanied him all his life.
In the fourth decade
He got married
To build a nest in the heart of the countryside,
Then begot a little bird
Two
And three
Taught them how to fly with love
Over the waves of the river
And how to long for the bread
Baked in the outdoors tandoor
But ..
In the eighth decade of the same century
He departed overwhelmed by grief
Over a dream
That would never come true
Never
Never
Never!!!
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Translated into English by: Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi
* Abdulsadah Al-Basri is a poet from Iraq
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2014
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Inaam Al-Hashimi Poem
Closed
Arabic Poem by: Hammoodi Al-Kinani*
Translated From Arabic
By: Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_n_silk)
=======================
Closed, so said the first door
Dead End, so said the second door
Don't Worry,
Sayeth all the doors!
Destitution! Destitution! Destitution!
So shouts the beggar in my face.
Drought! Drought! Drought!
So speaks the river to me.
Me ....?
I am still dancing in ecstasy,
Searching for leftover from a loaf
My mother baked in the first year of the last century;
I carry my portfolio of official documents
Containing,
A fake birth certificate,
Certificate of citizenship bearing odd digits,
Green housing card
Disclosing that I am still a Bedouin
Searching for a lost camel!
Our ration card
Does not contain, yet,
Materials quota;
It bears my name, my third, grandfather's name,
And the doubtful surname;
What else is there in my papers portfolio?
My permanent address
And house number
One, slash, One
District Number One
Not inhabited with people like me
Street, haunted by mud
And side-walks walking barefoot
Over pedestrians walkways.
Still wearing my father's shabby cloths,
I touched my belly to learn
How to broil hunger patties on it;
A policeman saw me,
He waved his whip to my face,
"Exposing your private parts and defects is prohibited!
Your belly is a defect,
Your unusual appearance is
A defect,
All these papers in your portfolio are defects;
We are charged with watching
Those who expose their defects in public."
Standing in line to receive
Laundry detergent is a defect,
Even scratching one's back
Falls within the Forbidden section;
When I felt frightened,
I went to visit my father's grave;
My mother was lying in his flank.
I prayed for my mother
And asked God his forgiveness
For my father
For repeatedly rubbing his belly
Because of bug bites.
------
Translated by; EM. prof. inaam Al-Hasjimi
USA
September 23, 2009
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* Hammoodi Al-Kinani is an Iraqi writer
Copyright © Inaam Al-Hashimi | Year Posted 2013
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