{"id":291,"date":"2003-10-04T12:45:42","date_gmt":"2003-10-04T20:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/blogs\/?p=291"},"modified":"2003-10-04T12:45:42","modified_gmt":"2003-10-04T20:45:42","slug":"106529674206105481","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/106529674206105481\/","title":{"rendered":"106529674206105481"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another nice collection of Arabic poetry in English is online at Kikah<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among the poets there is the innovative free verse pioneer Badr Shakir al-Sayyab who died in 1964 as the Tammuzi poets’ moment was drawing to a close. His poem Return to Jaykur<\/a> starts like this:<\/p>\n

I roamed the hills
\non the grey horse of a dream
\nfled the outstretched vistas,
\nfled the marketplace teeming with vendors,
\nfled the weary morning,
\nthe barking night, the quiet passers-by,
\nthe gloomy light,
\nfled the wine-drenched landlord,
\nfled the shame decked in flowers
\nand death in its leisurely stroll
\nalong the river’s drowsy currents.
\nIf only its waters would wake up,
\nif only the Virgin would come to drink,
\nif only the blood-drenched setting sun
\nwould immerse herself within these banks,
\nor else just rise.
\nAnd if only the branches of night
\nwould burst into leaf,
\nif the brothel would close its door to its customers.<\/div>\n

If only…reading all this poetry, especially the Iraqi poetry, makes one squirm a little with the uneasiness of knowing what has become of the “if only’s” in that region. “Return to Jaykur” blends these observations of desert life with Christian images in a way which seems startling given the cultural conditioning of the present moment that leads us to believe that there is a clean break between this world and that. Lines like:<\/p>\n

Who will hear my poems
\nwhen death’s silence dwells inside my home,
\nwhen night settles in my fire?
\nWho will lift the burden of my cross
\nin this long night of dread?
\nWho would cry out, who would answer to the hungry,
\ncare for the destitute?
\nWho would lower Jesus from His cross,
\nwho would drive the vultures from His wounds,
\nremove the lid of darkness from His dawn?
\nWho would replace His thorns with a crown of laurels?
\nJaykur, if you would only hear –
\nif you would only just be there –
\nif you would only give birth to a soul,
\neven an aborted, stunted soul,
\nas travelers could behold a star
\nto illuminate the night.
\nFor those without a path <\/div>\n

…could be lifted from a myriad of human experience located out of any time and place. If anything, retreading some of this thirty or forty year old poetry is taking me to a time when in fact the Middle East and the Far West were involved in an incredibly rich and sophisticated and complex relationship of culture and politics. I think it is a mistake now to assume that this is no longer true, that we in the West are only bound to these poetic voices from the East because of economic or global political imperatives. The fact is, and this is perhaps a great secret, we share much history and culture and our current societies owe much to our joint origins which course through our social veins like so many blood memories, stretching from 2003 back to our shared beginnings in the mud of Mesopotamia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another nice collection of Arabic poetry in English is online at Kikah. Among the poets there is the innovative free verse pioneer Badr Shakir al-Sayyab who died in 1964 as the Tammuzi poets’ moment was drawing to a close. His poem Return to Jaykur starts like this: I roamed the hills on the grey horse of a dream fled the outstretched vistas, fled the marketplace teeming with vendors, fled the weary morning, the barking night, the quiet passers-by, the gloomy light, fled the wine-drenched landlord, fled the shame decked in flowers and death in its leisurely stroll along the river’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-4H","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}