Iraqi Poetry Ishtar's Songs - since the 1970's
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Ishtar's Songs
Iraqi Poetry
since the 1970's
An Anthology
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Ishtar's Songs
Iraqi Poetry
since the 1970's
An Anthology
Edited and Translated by
Dr. Sadek R. Mohammed & Soheil Najm
3
PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryMinistry of Culture
Dar al– Ma’mun for Translation and Publishing
P.O. Box :8018
E.mail : Dar_Mamoon@yahoo.com
All rights reserved
First Edition
Republic of Iraq ـBaghdad
Printed in Culture Affairs Department
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryFor Amir Sadek R. Mohammed
"May God bring you home safely"
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Contents
Acknowledgements …………………………………. 15
Introduction ………………………………………… 17
Abbas al- Ali 23
A Call for Shrouding Medals…………………………... 24
A Scandal Wearing a Tie ……………………………… 25
For the Memory and Its Closets ………………………. 26
Abdussadah al- Basri …………………………………... 27
Paradoxes in Reverse Meaning …………………………... 28
The Moon Courts It Every Night ………………………… 31
Abdul Settar Jabr al-Asadi ………………………….. 33
The Dead Sea …………………………………………. 34
Boredom Window …………………………………........ 36
Abdul-Khaliq Keitan ………………………………... 38
Or …He Staggers Like a Dethroned King 39
The Pain Sura …………………………………................ 42
Abdul-Mutalib Mahmood ……………………………… 45
Difficult Case ………………………………………….. 46
Possibilities ……………………………………………. 47
My Dead Ones Are Waiting at the Door 49
Abdul-Zahra Zeki …………………………………....... 52
The Wine of the Sultans ………………………………... 53
The Bones of the Hoopoe ……………………………..... 54
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryAthenian Statue …………………………………............. 55
In the Valley of the Souls ………………………………. 56
Experiment ………………………………….................... 57
Abdul-Kareem Kasid ……………………………….. 58
The House …………………………………..................... 59
The Ideal City …………………………………………… 60
The Ephemeral ………………………………….............. 61
Adeeb Kamal Ad - Deen ………………………………. 62
An Attempt at Magic …………………………………..... 63
An Attempt at Madness ……………………………….... 66
Adil Abdullah ………………………………….............. 70
Collective Unemployment …………………………….... 71
The prey …………………………………........................ 72
Adil Mardan …………………………………………… 73
Statues Watching Nothingness ………………………..... 74
The Big Brother …………………………………............ 76
Adnan al-Saiq …………………………………………... 77
"Slightly Quarrelsome Texts …………............................ 78
Ahmed Abdussada …………………………………... 82
The Spindle of the Day ………………………………..... 83
Ahmed Asheikh ……………………………………… 86
From Her Book..Again ………………………………..... 87
Ahmed Adam ………………………………………... 91
The Guide to the Window …………………………….... 92
Formations …………………………………..................... 94
Ahmed Sadawi ……………………………….. …….. 96
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryWho Am I in This Year? ……………............................ 97
Akeel Ali ………………………………………………… 101
A Body that Speaks by its Limbs ………......................... 102
Star …………………………………................................ 103
Blood of Desire …………………………………............. 103
That Name …………………………………..................... 104
Ali Abdulameer ……………………………………… 105
Vanishing Country …………………………………........ 106
There Were Roses Around ……………………………... 107
Tomorrow is Expelled from its Balconies……………... 108
Ali Habash ………………………………........................ 109
A Second-Rate Future …………………………………... 110
Ali al-Imarah …………………………………... ……... 115
Difficulty …………………………………...................... 116
Grandchildren …………………………………............... 116
Helmet …………………………………........................... 117
Amal al-Jubouri …………………………………........ 118
The Veil of Cain ………………………………….......... 119
The Veil of Eve …………………………………........... 120
The Veil of Adam …………………………………......... 121
Baqir Sahib …………………………………................. 122
A Wolf without Preys …………………………………... 123
Basim al-Murabi …………………………………........ 126
The Days of the Tiger …………………………………... 127
Air of the Exile …………………………………............. 128
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryA Poet in Exile …………………………………............. 129
Rain ................................................................................ 130
Basim Furat …………………………………................ 131
Man of Blood …………………………………......... 132
Life Runs Whenever You Catch it…………………….. 133
Delawar Qaradaghi …………………………………. 135
Completely Naked Like Water………………………… 136
Faliha Hassan …………………………………............. 139
On the Fringe of the War ……………............................ 140
Hadi al-Husseiny …………………………………........ 142
Fog of Graves …………………………………............... 143
Haider al – Ka'abi …………………………………..... 145
The Sword …………………………………................... 146
The Body Call …………………………………............... 147
Hameed Qassim ………………………………….......... 148
True Nature ………………………………….................. 149
Hanadi al-Maliki ………………………………………. 151
A Wheat Bird …………………………………................ 152
Booby Trap Ghosts …………………………………....... 154
Hashem Shafeeq ………………………………….......... 156
The Handkerchief ………………………………….......... 157
The Needle ………………………………….................... 158
Husein Ali Yunis ……………………………………... 159
Poem …………………………………......................... 160
Poem …………………………………......................... 160
Poem …………………………………......................... 160
The Depression of Enkidu …………….......................... 161
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryJalal Zangabadi …………………………………........... 162
In a Disastrous Map …………………………………..... 163
What An Ignorant Was I! …………............................... 164
My Question Invades Me ……………………………. 165
Kadhim al-Hajaj ……………………………………... 166
Suleiman al-Halabi…………………………………….. 167
The Wedding Ceremony of Ali Bin Mohamed ……….. 169
Khazaal al-Majidi ………………………………………. 171
The Amulet of the Hot Woman ……………………….. 172
The Talisman of the Mouth-the Wound ………………. 172
The Amulet of Fire ……………………………………. 173
Khalil al-Asadi ………………………………………….. 174
Fear ………………………………………………………. 175
The Intention ………………………………………….. 176
Khalid al-Ma’ali ………………………………………… 177
Speech …………………………………………………. 178
My Setback is Incessant ………………………………. 179
Eyes Thought of Us …………………………………… 180
When Patience Had a Person ………………………….. 181
Lateef Helmet ………………………………………….. 182
The Storm ……………………………………………... 183
Home ………………………………………………….. 184
You are in my heart …………………………………… 185
Sugar …………………………………………………... 186
Mohammed Mazloom …………………………………. 187
Anabasis ……………………………………………….. 188
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryMohammed al-Nassar ……………………………….. 191
Lies in an Inkpot ………………………………………. 192
When Will I Wake up from This Life? ………………. 194
Munthir Abdul-Hur ……………………………………. 198
I, Too, Love Butterflies ……………………………….. 199
Muqdad Masaud ........................................................... 201
False Roofs ……………………………………………. 202
Logic of Feathers ………………………………………... 203
Mustafah Abdulah …………………………………… 204
The Horse ……………………………………………... 205
Master Silence ………………………………………… 206
The Beautiful Foreigner ………………………………. 207
Muwafak Mohamed …………………………………. 210
Fatwas for Rent ……………………………………….. 211
Nasif al-Nasiry ……………………………………… 216
Nature Is Our Heritage ………………………………. 217
Nature’s Lesson ……………………………………… 218
The Matter, the Senses, the Idea and the Atoms ……. 220
Ra'ad Abdulqadir …………………………………… 222
Let the Nightingale Wonder …………………………... 223
Windows ………………………………………………. 224
Ra’ad Mutashar ………………………………………… 225
Kirkuk …………………………………………………. 226
Reem Qais Kubba ……………………………………. 229
Heeltap ………………………………………………… 230
An Earring …………………………………………….. 231
Apples …………………………………………………. 232
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryA Kiss ……………………………………………….… 233
A Stick ……………………………………………..….. 233
A Shirt …………………………………………….…… 234
A Rose ………………………………………………… 235
Sa’ad Jasim…………………………………………… 236
This is the Question …………………………………… 237
Singularity …………………………………………….. 238
Safa Thiyab …………………………………………... 239
A Green Rock …………………………………………. 240
Who Knows?................................................................... 241
The Iraqi……………………………………………….. 242
A God …………………………………………………. 242
Salah Hassan …………………………………………. 243
Postponed Geography …………………………………. 244
The Statue of the Poet …………………………………. 246
Reception Party ………………………………………... 247
Run away from the Family …………………………… 248
Salam Dawai …………………………………………. 249
My Country …………………………………………… 250
In My Head …………………………………………… 252
Poems ………………………………………………… 253
Salman Dawood Mohammed ………………………….. 255
Unarmed Morning …………………………………….. 256
Shaker Laibi …………………………………………. 257
The Unshod Ladies Went on Foot …………………… 258
Scorpions are Relaxing in the Darkness of the Garden 259
Shawqi Abdulamir …………………………………… 260
Yesterday I Met a Country ……………………………. 261
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryA Stone on This Weep ………………………………… 263
A Third Bank ………………………………………….. 264
Siham Jabber ………………………………………… 265
Texts …………………………………………………... 266
Like Hypatia* in Ancient Times ……………………… 268
Soheil Najm …………………………………………... 271
A Sparrow Rubbed by the Flute ………………………. 272
The Song of Wandering Basri ………………………… 275
Taleb Abdulaziz ……………………………………… 278
History of Distress ……………………………………. 279
Yahya Sahib …………………………………………. 283
The Watches ………………………………………….. 284
Zahir al-Jizani ……………………………………….. 286
You, Alone, Collect Our Fractures …………………… 287
Zaeem al - Nassar …………………………………….. 295
On The Way Till the Hidden Statue Falls Down …….. 296
Ziara Mehdi ………………………………………….. 298
A Tree in the Horizon …………………………………. 299
Why Do I Wave?............................................................. 301
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryAcknowledgements
For their bright notes here and there on the
translations I'd like to express my thanks to the New
Zealand poet Mark Pirie and the American poet Susan
Bright. Also special thanks to Dr. Mohammed Darweesh
for his precious notes concerning the whole manuscript.
Soheil Najm
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Introduction
Contemporary Iraqi Literature in general is not known to
many people in the world. This is a sad fact that we must
acknowledge. In fact, very few people know that we do have a
modern literature of our own. Some think that nothing was
produced after the great masterpieces of the Abbasid era.
Personally, I shall never forget how in a recent discussion with
some Russian poets and writers in the Writers’ Union of the city
of Volgograd many of our Russian friends politely expressed
their lack of knowledge of the modern and contemporary Iraqi
literary scene. They were able to mention the Arabian Nights
and some even mentioned Gilgamesh, but nothing more. In
India, things were even worse. Even departments of Arabic lack
proper knowledge of modern and contemporary Iraqi literary
figures. “No texts are available” was the answer I got most of
the time in my visits to Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi. In
fact, many of my Indian colleagues, who were teaching
comparative literature with me in some Arab universities, were
asking me all the time to provide them with translations of Iraqi
literary texts as those available were very rare if ever they
existed. Undoubtedly, language is a barrier here. Not very many
people know Arabic. Of course we must not expect all the
people in the world to know our language and then know our
literature. This is nonsense. Arabic is not an easy language to
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactorylearn. Here comes the role of translation then. We must make
our literature available to all the people of the world in
translation. Unfortunately, most of our translational efforts
focused so far on translating world literature into Arabic. Our
efforts in translating Iraqi literature into other languages were
meager and sporadic. Selections of literary figures that must be
translated were done on a very partial basis. Only those who
were very powerful in the Iraqi literary establishment were
translated. Some were translated regardless of the literary merits
of their literary output. And some were translated on a personal
basis. They know translators or someone close to them and they
get translated. Nevertheless, even these translations disappeared
very fast because they were few in number and they went to the
wrong hands. There is a need to translate, retranslate and update
our translated anthologies all the time. It must be a continuous
process, in other words an open-ended process. Many
translations of the same poet or dramatist or novelist must be
available. We can not say that this poet or that novelist is
translated, so there is no need to translate him/her again.
Readers must have the freedom of choice. A more inclusive
approach must be adopted in selections and translations. Thus
comes the idea behind translating this anthology of
contemporary Iraqi poetry into English.
In the period starting from the 1970’s up to the present
moment only a small fortunate group of poets were translated.
The majority were marginalized or neglected. They were
writing at very difficult times. Every word was scrutinized by a
brutal, ignorant censorship. “You are either with us or against
us” was the motto of the merciless guardians of the literary
establishment. “With us”, according to the logic of the
authorities, meant chanting hymns in praise of the then
dominant ideology and the futile wars of its leader. “Against
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryus” meant any possibility of free independent thinking that
might not necessarily threaten their ideology or their leader. It
was a difficult period that had witnessed the migration or,
indeed, the exile of the best of the best of the Iraqi talents. Thus,
two categories came into being: ‘residing poetry’ and ‘exile
poetry’. Those who continued to live in Iraq very rarely knew
about what was written in exile and vice versa. They both took
two separate ways in their evolution and enrichment until they
became two separate entities. But they remained attached to the
land in which they witnessed their first existence. The above
mentioned categories entailed the problem of allocating ‘exile
poetry’ as the Iraqi exile stretched all over the world. The Iraqi
poets migrated to every corner of the world. In the present
anthology, Basim Furat lives in Japan, Adeeb Kamaludin lives
in Australia, Haider Al-Kaabi lives in the United States of
America, Saad Jasim lives in Canada, and Abdul-Razaq Al-
Rubaiee lives in Oman just to mention a few. Furthermore, not
all residing poets enjoyed the ‘luxury’ of getting their poetry
published. Many of them were personally typing and
photocopying their collections. And these were privately
circulated among a narrow circle of friends and acquaintances.
The fear of not finding enough sources on this period was a
valid one. But when I carried my idea of translating the poetry
of this period to my friend, the renowned poet and translator,
Soheil Najm, who had, before me, started translating Iraqi
contemporary poets into English and published his translations
in various magazines, he put between my hands a treasure of
sources which he was meticulously collecting and archiving
throughout the years. He also contacted tens of Iraqi poets in
Iraq and all over the world and asked them to send their poetry.
Had it not been for him, a timid introvert like me wouldn’t have
been able to contribute anything to a work like the present
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryanthology. He, through his connections with many Iraqi poets,
made available all the required collections. And we agreed
together to prepare and translate this anthology. We officially
started our work in the summer of 2005 immediately after my
return from a self-imposed exile in various countries.
Everything was different in the country and in our city,
Baghdad. Life was absolutely impossible. There was no
electricity, no fuel and no potable water. Even if we wanted to
meet, we had to take our chances through car bombs, roadside
bombs, mortar shelling and the unidentified death squads that
were massacring the city. A translator was, indeed, perceived as
a traitor in that hellish atmosphere and many were assassinated
under the false pretext of being collaborators with “the
occupation forces”. There were many moments in which I
wanted to abandon this work. It was Soheil’s inexhaustible
patience and solid belief in the importance of what we were
doing that kept me going on. But above all I was getting a real
therapeutic effect from the poetry itself, especially some of the
residing one, which, in spite of the suffocating atmosphere, was
creatively able to express the permanent concerns of the Iraqi
soul and its yearning for beauty, freedom, justice and peace.
We have three generations of poets here according to the
traditional ‘decimal’ classification of generations in Iraq. A
generation is conceived, according to this classification, as a
group of poets who started to write and were first known in a
certain decade. Even if all of them outlive that decade and
continue to be productive in the following decades, they will
continue to be referred to as belonging to the first decade in
which they first started their career as poets. Thus, traditionally
critics speak of ‘the poets of the seventies’, ‘the poets of the
eighties’ and ‘the poets of the nineties’ as the three different
generations comprising this anthology. Ironically, the majority
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryof the poets of the seventies are still productive even today. The
same is also true of the poets of the eighties and the poets of the
nineties. This propensity towards fixating poets in a certain
decade is rife in our criticism. It might probably be just a hasty
attempt on the part of critics at naming literary phenomena
before they take their true name in the history of Iraqi literature
as we lack literary historians. Otherwise, all the poets of this
anthology can be classified as one generation. Historically, they
all belong to the same historical era. Artistically, they all use the
free verse form of modern Iraqi poetry that was primarily
initiated in modern Iraqi and Arab poetry by Nazik Al-Malaeka,
Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, Abdulwahab Al-Bayati and Buland Al-
Haidari which later on perfected its form in what is known here
as prose poetry. That is to say, the type of poetry that initially
kept some form of classical Arabic meter and later on did away
with it in the prose poems. Thematically, the majority of them
tackle the themes of injustice, war, isolation, alienation, exile,
poverty, the will to life in the face of the death forces and the
yearning for beauty. One can safely say that all their poetry was
an outcry against the forces that were depriving the Iraqi soul of
its basic rights.
We tried in this anthology to present all the major voices of
the period in spite of the very difficult time in which we
worked. But an anthology remains an anthology. It can not
include all the names and all the poems. If a name does not
appear here, then this exclusion is absolutely unintentional. We
did our best to find all the published collections of poetry, but
many of these were out of print. Many poets were very
cooperative and they generously provided us with their
collections, but some were not. They thought that it was our
responsibility to find their poetry and translate it. Unfortunately,
we could not do this all the time as we lacked sufficient
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryfinancial resources. So we would like here to apologize in
advance to all those whom we could not include in this
anthology and promise to include all as soon as we get any feed
back from them in the future.
Lastly, we would like to conclude by saying that the best test
of poetry is translation and that the best test of translation is
poetry. They both try to succeed in each other’s test here.
Dr. Sadek R. Mohammed
Baghdad, August 6, 2006
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryAbbas al-Ali
Abbas al-Ali: Born in Baghdad 1965.
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryA Call for Shrouding Medals
For the old general
As he parades,
Like a teenager cock,
For him, and especially for his polished shoes,
A sticky banana peel.
***
For his ranks and for his museum medals,
For his strutting stick,
For his long sword like the skewer of Israel
Dropping of a sparrow
Trying his wings for the first time.
***
For the blue Viagra tablets,
As they emerge from the pocket of his hairless follower,
A prostitute’s spit.
***
For the banana skin,
For the sparrow and the prostitute
I raise∗ my hat respectfully
And see behind it the miserable helmet
Gleaming between earth and sky.
Translated by: Soheil Najm
∗
Asraeel: The angel of death.
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryA Scandal Wearing a Tie
The lifting of toasts
And the hissing of ladies' dresses,
A spur breaks the silence of the marble of the hall.
***
The lady of the hall
Winks to the gardener
As she dances with her noble husband
***
The husband of the lady of the hall
A very noble man for sure
Pinches the maid’s ass
As he receives the glass from her.
***
When the palace clock announces its first lie
After the mid-fake
The master and the lady pass the seduction protocols
On two soft separate beds
By complaining of the rudeness of the servants
And the maid reveals to the gardener
The secrets of injurious pleasure
On the kitchen flagstones
. So they curse the generosity of the masters
***
The hall
The lady “the hall”
Switched off the TV.
Drank the remained glasses
And wished to change the role with the servant “kitchen”.
Translated by: Soheil Najm
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PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactoryFor the Memory and Its Closets
Wearing Yousif’s shirt
And Charlie Chaplin’s trousers
Trains look at me doubtfully,
Bags sit in first class chairs,
The bags that wear silver ties,
And I am hammering the pegs of my alienation
In the fever of the last-seat window.
When I stare at our old cities' walls
The train becomes a Cossack horse
Playing the contrabass.
There is a moon not burnt yet
Which lighted for the first time
The instant my mother's sight stumbled
In front of the needle of the sewing machine.
Oh, mother as big as our sins
Why do the shrouds alone
Wear silk
In our naked countries?
Translated by: Soheil Najm
The Painting by: Muayed Muhsin
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