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Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 21:32:49
Letters to Childhood Forgive me,my child, if the name I gave you is not the name you would have chosen... All the children of the world, in all my abodes you are the roses in my courtyard, the green and the fresh, the sun and the stars, you are the beautiful hands, the one who raise the flag of childhood high. I give my life to you. To you I write my poems. -Mohammed Shehadeh translated by Aziz Shihab

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 21:40:51
Picture Three girls in the family album. Good-looking as they knew how to be in Tyre,Lebabon,nineteen-thirty-eight. Behind them are steps and an unsteady railing. A flowerpot has been placed at their feet, at the request of the refined photographer, for the sake of the composition. In the righthand corner a circle gleams in the heart of the tile that,for years, carried the burden of the flowerpot with grat courtesy. Now,bare,it is exposed to its shame before the camera. It seems that after the click no one will bother to return the pot to its place. And perhaps that tile carries the ring of shame on its heart to this very day. I would not have committed the modest memory of that flowerpot to paper had it not,for a long time, recurred in my dreams. The girl in the middle is dressed in black. In due time she will be my mother. -Anton Shammas translated by Judy Levy

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 21:44:51
Coda They say in my village I was born With one hand placed Over my heart The men said This child will live With the heart of a prophet And the women of the tribe "Rejoice!" they said Hailing the future lover But the old men Were holding back their tears                     and keeping calm. -Shafiq Al-Kamali translated by Sargon Boulus and Christopher Middleton

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 21:53:47
My Mother's Wedding Parade Still a child,innocent,naive,seventeen. A good student pulled out of school to wed. It was arranged,it was final,it was done. The gown was rented,the whole town paraded. The brief private talk with the aunt and the stepmother took place- very little was learned. Salimeh* was not relaxed. She shook,she perspired,she cried, she was a child. The whole town brought sweets in their Sunday best. She wept upon leaving her father's modern home for a humble two-room stone house to share with her in-laws and a man she only knew by sight. She went along, went along, singing to herself a song of prayers. The whole town looked on, gossiped, and the the wedding picture showed a different dress from the original one- a wrinkled dress. My mother was so tall,so beautiful, so strong, her dress was so long. -Lorene Zarou-Zouzounis *Salimeh-a girl's name.

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 21:56:52
Attention Those who come by me passing I will remember them and those who come heavy and overbearing I will forget That's why when the air erupts between mountains we always describe the wind and forget the rocks -Saadi Youssef translated by Khaled Mattawa

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 22:03:30
Class Pictures In the last week of school There's a camera in class, and smiles (the teacher's in the center,wearing flowers) Gideon is next to Yael, They're a couple. Ruth's eyes are closed,she's dreaming. And I'm no in the picture. I had the measles. On the last day of school There's a camera in the yard, and smiles. (the teacher's next to me,wearing flowers.) And Gideon and Yael Are no longer a couple. Yael closes her eyes, she's dreaming. Ruth isn't in the picture. She had the measles. In the class picture, In the yard, or in the building, Someone is always missing. -Shlomit Cohen-Assif translated by Nelly Segal

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 22:05:39
A Poem of Bliss We are placed on a wedding cake like the two dolls,bride and groom. When the knife strikes we'll try to stay on the same slice. -Ronny Someck translated by Yair Mazor

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 22:09:46
Grandfather Your grandchildren are climbing the oak tree in the backyard on the planks of wood you nailed in its side Soon they will not remember who spaced them so evenly Do you feel the weight of a small foot on your heart, and when they reach the top will you grasp their hands and hoist them up with you? -Mohja Kahf

Re: Poems
Sara
12/31/00 at 22:14:11
Homeland Anxious,anxious am I for a homeland, The windows of my longing are open.       How tired I am of moving around       The walking stick of travel                          is nearly broken So I take refuge in my dreams I sing my songs I travel in my imagination to the shores of my homeland Oh,how much I long for a homeland. -Balkis Saleem Zaghal translated by Aziz Shihab

Re: Poems
bhaloo
12/31/00 at 23:50:25
slm Who are these people? ???

Re: Poems
Sara
01/01/01 at 11:49:20
Assalam, I got these poems from a book called: The Space Between Our Footsteps (poems and paintings from the Middle East) Selected by: Naomi Shihab Nye

Re: Poems
Sara
01/01/01 at 11:59:55
Rice Paradise My grandmother wouldn't let us leave rice on our plates. Instead of telling us about hunger in India and children with swollen bellies who would have opened their mouths wide for each grain, she would drag all the leftovers to the centers of our plates with a screeching fork and, nearly in tears, tell how the uneaten rice would rise to the heavens to complain to God. Now she's dead and I imagine the joy of the encounter between her false teeth and the angels with flaming swords at the gates of rice paradise. They spread,beneath her feet, a carpet of red rice and the yellow rice sun beats down on the lovely garden of little white grains. My grandmother spreads olive oil on their skins and slips them one by one into the cosmic pots of God's kitchen. Grandma,I feel like telling her, rice is a seashell that shrunk,and like it you rose from the sea. The water of my life. -Ronny Someck translated by Vivian Eden

Re: Poems
Sara
01/01/01 at 12:13:07
In the Mid-Thirties In the mid-thirties my uncle Zelig came from America and took me and my mother to a cafe on the beach of Tel Aviv, where we ate something delightfully sweet. Long years later I found out it was the richest ice cream. A band played, and mother laughed when my uncle invited her to dance the tango, as I found out long years later with a few more facts, for instance,that my father had been out of work and the owner of the house where we rented half a flat was planning to throw us out because we had not paid the rent and those funny people, the Yekkes*, who came to live in our neighborhood were running away from Hitler- we used to sing about him near to a lamp-post: "One,two,three Hitler came from Germany, Where can he be found today? The devils snatched him right away." Who could have known then that they didn't take him, that he would live for ten more years. I knew nothing of this and yet I longed to stay there on the beach, wanted mother to go on dancing, and for me-another ice cream and that the setting sun would not put on its pink pajamas and go to sleep on time -Aryeh Sivan translated by the author and Arnold J. Band *Yekkes-a nickname for jews born in Germany who immigrated to Palestine in the 1930's

Re: Poems
Sara
01/01/01 at 12:21:51
I Remember My Father's Hands because they were large,and square, fingers chunky,black hair like wire because they fingered worry beads over and over (that muted clicking,that constant motion,that secular prayer) because they ripped bread with quiet purpose, dipped fresh green oil like a birthright because after his mother's funeral they raised a tea cup, set it down untouched,uncontrollably trembling because when they trimmed hedges,pruned roses, their tenderness caught my breath with jealousy because once when I was a child they cupped my face, dry and warm,flesh full and calloused,for a long moment because over his wife's still form they faltered great mute helpless beasts because when his own lungs filled and sank they reached out for the first time pleading because when I look at my hands his own speak back -Lisa Suhair Majaj

Re: Poems
Sara
01/01/01 at 12:29:05
Stone for a Sling ...i played games with child friends whose names i forgot i was the best at grabbing the five stones off the ground thanks to those five stones in one hand i could never ever hold a sling to kill birds... then i saw life-size cartoons of wars,of massacred, of genocide... of fingerprints crying out for their owners... of human beings indifferent to human affliction... now in my room with birds from all over the world i play hide-and-seek in poems hoping to shed light into lullabies... hoping not to be the stone for a sling. -Yusuf Eradam

Re: Poems
Sara
01/01/01 at 18:49:33
Growing It so happens I am happy to be a daughter and it happens that I dance into dinner parties and Arabic concerts dressed up, polished,like a pearl in the tender hands of a diver sliding on my path in a garden of olive trees and jasmine. The scent of my mother sends me to a green orchard. My only wish is to grow like seeds or trees, my only wish is to see no more death,no poverty, no more maimed,no drunks,no drugs. It so happens that I am delighted by my father's  victories and his pride and his brown eyes and his bald head. It so happens he is happy to be my father. And I'd feel lucky if I attended my parent's 50th wedding anniversary or conceived a child with dark curly hair. It would be wonderful to free my country with honest talk planting orange trees until I died of happiness. I want to go on following the moon- bright,silvery,secur with the light casting jasmine into the bloody streets of Jerusalem, blossoming every day. I don't want to fall in a grave, restless underneath the weight, a martyr for nothing, dried-up,battling against the lies. That's why my mother,when she greets me with her outstretched arms gives me the moon, and she runs through the arching streeets of Gaza, and stops to stare at the white minarets of the mosques, planting seeds of green fruit. And my father leads me to the Golden Dome of the Rock into debates about survival into gatherings where friends speak of the good past, into houses that remind me of home into a sunny shelter cradled like a baby nursing from a beloved breast. There are starving children, and homeless people hovering in the polluted air that I hate. There are malignant cysts that should disappear from bodies and skin. There are soldiers all over,and machine-guns,and tear gas. I climb slowly with my moon,my roots,my dome, remembering my parents, I hike up,through the sloping hills and green orchards, and gardens of olive trees smelling of jasmine in which little white petals are growing. -Deema Shehabi Khorsheed

Re: Poems
Sara
08/05/01 at 19:50:43
The Middle East no, it is not only the date clusters in the palm trees but also the oil, the phosphate, the potassium, the olives, the citrus, the salt, the milk and honey, and the manna that falls from Heaven. People kill to share this land, while the verse on their holiday letter reads: "Peace on Earth!" -Nadia Hazboun Reimer
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