Two Poems by Farouk Goweda

translated by Walid Abdallah and Andy Fogle

Love in a Time of Terrorism

Where did you come from?
What land gave you your life?
The horizon is studded with pieces of fire.

Who said that the jasmine tree
blossoms in blood fields, its perfume
scattered among the slaughter?

Long ago, the morning faded from my eyes,
and the light was swallowed by the cosmos itself,
not the mere canopy of dark sky we know.

The road forked, and you and I
were two stars behind a cloud.
We orbit each other in the vast.

There is now a willow tree on the horizon,
and the singing of a broken nightingale
that touched the very atmosphere before its flight.

Where did you come from?

You are the last night. Before
our winter, the beaches were empty
and the waves dizzied with their whirling.

I can’t believe blood is all that’s left
after a lifetime of love and poems.
I can’t believe that the end of homelands

is in the name of religion: murder, suicide,
severed limbs. I can’t believe that hunger
is the day, that tyranny and chaos line every road.

Where did you come from?

At the ends of alleys, in the depths
of tunnels, your look is like a thread of light
through a cutting dust storm.

How long I thought love was chance,
victim of circumstance. But no: here,
in this ringing emptiness, love is a choice.

قصيدة الحب في زمن الارهاب

مِنْ أينَ جئتِ
وأى أرضٍ أنجبتك
وكلُّ ما فى الأفق أشلاءٌ ونارْ
من قالَ إن شجيرةَ الياسْمينِ
تنبتُ فى حقول الدَّم
تنثرُ عطرَها وسطَ المذابح والدمارْ
ومتى ظهرت
وقد توارى الصبح فى عيْنَىّ
من زمن. وودعَنَا النهارْ
صَغُرتْ عيونُ الكونِ فى أحداقنا
حتى تلاشىَ الضوءُ. وافترق المسارْ
وأنا وأنت
كنجمتين وراء هذا الغيمِ
رغم البعدِ يجمعنا المدارْ
وعلى امتداد الأفقِ ظلُ شجيرةٍ
وغناءُ عصفورٍ كسير
أطربَ الدنيا وطارْ
– من أينَ جئت؟!
وأنتِ آخر ليلةٍ
زارتْ خريفَ العمرِ
والشطآنُ خالية
وموجُ البحر أتعبه الدوارْ.
أنا لا أصدق
ان يكونَ الدمُّ آخرَ ما تبقى
من زمانِ الحبِ والأشعارْ
أنا لا أصدقُ أن تكون نهايةَ الأوطان باسمِ الدينِ
أشلاءٌ وقتلٌ وانتحارْ
أنا لا أصدقُ أن يسود الجوعُ
والطغيانُ والفوضى فى آخر المشوارْ
– من أين جئت؟
تبدو عيونك آخرَ السرداب
ضوءاً خافتاً وسطَ العواصفِ والغبارْ
كم كنتُ أسألُ كيف يأتى الحبُ أقداراً
وكيف يجئ والعشقُ اختيار

Rainy Night Blues

The ceiling is bleeding,
the wall moans with rain, and that
is how I drown. Other nights,
this grief drives me to the narrow
places: tight streets, inky alleys,

potholes in forgotten lanes,
and that is how I am cornered.
In my face are specks of the past,
and all the evenings’ ghosts
sleep in my eyes. Clothes don’t hide torment,

or the chain at my wrist, shackle
since who knows when. That’s how it’s been
all my life, nothing in my house
but night-silence, with hope
a passing cloud that morphs and fades.

There is a package in the far
corner: inside is a prayer
from my father and a spell
from my mother’s heart. Her prayers
were like any mother’s for her child:

long health, deep content. No one
answered, but none of that rends
my mind like the broken cry of this
wounded nation, like the broken
cry of the innocent’s dream.

احزان ليلة مطيرة

السقف ينزف فوق رأسي
والجدار يئن من هول المطر
!وأنا غريق بين أحزاني تطاردني الشوارع للأزقة .. للحفر
في الوجه أطياف من الماضي
وفي العينين نامت كل أشباح السهر
والثوب يفضحني وحول يدي قيد لست أذكر عمرهُ
لكنه كل العمر ..
لا شيء في بيتي سوى صمت الليالي
والأماني غائمات في البصر
وهناك في الركن البعيد لفافة
فيها دعاء من أبي
تعويذة من قلب أمي لم يباركها القدر
دعواتها كانت بطول العمر والزمن العنيد المنتصر
أنا ماحزنت على سنين العمر طال العمر عندي .. أم قصر
لكن أحزاني على الوطن الجريح
وصرخة الحلم البريء المنكسر

Farouk Goweda is a bestselling Egyptian poet, journalist, and playwright whose nearly 50 books have been widely influential in the Middle East. His work has been translated into English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Persian, and he has been awarded several national and international prizes.

Walid Abdallah is an Egyptian poet and author whose books include Shout of Silence, Escape to the Realm of Imagination, My Heart-Oasis, and Male Domination and Female Emancipation. He has been a visiting professor of English language and literature in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the United States. His prize-winning co-translations with Andy Fogle of Farouk Goweda’s poetry have previously appeared in ANMLY, Image, RHINO, Reunion: Dallas Review, and Los Angeles Review.

Andy Fogle has six chapbooks of poetry and a full-length called Across from Now(Grayson Books). Along with this co-translations with Walid Abdallah, his poetry and a variety of nonfiction have appeared in Blackbird, Best New Poets 2018, Gargoyle, Parks and Points, and elsewhere. He was born in Norfolk, grew up in Virginia Beach, and lived for 11 years in the DC area, and now lives in upstate NY, teaching high school and working on a PhD in Education.