Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Ali Alhazmi from SAUDI ARABIA: Born in Damadd, Saudi Arabia, Ali Alhazmi obtained a degree in Arabic Language and Literature at Umm Al-Qura University, Faculty of Arabic Language. As early as 1985, Ali started publishing his poetry in a variety of local and Arabic international cultural publications including The Seventh Day (Paris), Creativity (Cairo), Nazoa (Amman) and The New Text. He has participated various International Poetry Festivals including; Costa Rica (2013), Spain (2014), Uruguay (2015), Cuba, Colombia and Turkey (2016), Italy and Romania (2017) and Spain (2018). His work has been translated into many languages, and his publications include: A Gate for the Body (1993), Loss (2000), Deer Drink Its Own Image (2004), Comfortable on the Edge (2009), and Now in the Past (2018). His awards include: Medal of Poetry (Uruguay, 2015), The World Grand Prize for Poetry, (Romania 2017), the Verbumlandi Prize (Italy, 2017) and Best International Poet (China, 2018). Global IconAward (Italy, 2020). Italian Prize “Colors of the Soul” (Italy, 2021).
Throwing Your Grief as a Rock into the Waters
In your forties,
Wingless,
You urge the meaning to fly once again,
As though you are powerful enough, once more, to step over the clouds.
***
Heading towards your own wilderness
The winds put all the sins of the tale upon your shoulders.
Since you stopped at the gates of your past
With chained legs,
Neither your years returned to the song;
Nor did the gorgeous girls come back from the trees of childhood jocundly
To your fields.
***
In your forties,
There, near the springs
Longing takes you towards the deers,
That no more listen to your songs
When you feel their approaching steps
And when the bird of words chirps
On a lonely branch in the heart.
You throw your grief like a rock into the sea
And see your face burning
In the furnace of the lost painful moment.
***
In your forties,
When you are fastened
To the flutes on the shawl of a ballad,
Find a dove forgotten in your own travelling meaning.
Do not exhaust the tender melody
With sighs of the memory that circle around your soul like bracelet.
***
In your forties,
The past assumes you are so close to its orchards,
While you are there still stuck in the wilderness of your fantasies.
When you started your voyage
Towards your glittering metaphor,
You paid no attention to the thorny questions
Staring from afar at your feet.
***
In your forties on the roads,
No more you need to fold your shadows
As you head towards the pleasures of life,
Trying to reach the lost bank of the river.
Memory asks, “When was it when you went bewildered in the presence of oblivion?”
What would have hurt your innocent past if you stopped at its noble gates for greeting,
Dropping off the burdens of rejection that have watered your eyes with the thirst of nothingness?
***
In your forties,
A woman from the past visits you;
Don’t be rude to her flutes by asking about her distant love stories.
Save her from the deceptive mills,
And restore her to pure joy
And to her flowers;
Listen to the bird of her soul
Neglected in the trees of absence;
Be like the soft rains for her if she goes astray;
Be the metaphorical chord if she smiles;
And be an existential passion
If she looks at you.
But, when you approach her extensive fires,
Be nothing but ashes.
Only You, Nobody but You
When you sleep,
Nobody sees you,
Even if you cry loudly in the prairies of dreams.
Your footsteps are traceless
Even if you walk upon the silk of the first desire towards the farthest kiss.
The earth has now power to recognize your radiance in the vastness of absence.
***
When you sleep,
You lock your eyelids
Against faces no longer know the true meaning of love in their own eyebrows.
With your hands,
You dig a hole for the past
Where through, you pierce toward the spring of those who enveloped your heart with liveliness, singing, and hope.
***
In your sleep,
It is enough to wave from your bed
For those you cherish
To make them land down from the clouds of their past,
And from their oblivion.
You proceed to distant years
With a soul liberated,
No misty horizons hinder your way towards your far places.
***
In sleep,
Fantasy overcomes its own shortcomings,
Hopefulness takes revenge from its pangs and its guards.
In sleep, no day or night is there;
Times are equal in meaning and in the passion for meditation on absence.
In sleep, you go farther than the echo of your memory,
And closer to the blossoming of a rose in its field.
You are the last, the first, and the second.
Your shadow on the road is the third of two
Ready for questions towards a forgotten destination.
***
In sleep, you need no compass
To know that all the surrounding eyelids are primarily directed to you
As they emerge from the past.
Only you, nobody but you
Have to observe the lightness of the souls,
And touch the feathers of their merry bird.
Only you
Have to liberate the last doe of sentiment
Off the traps of her upcoming gloom
And its steel chains
***
In sleep, it is easy to find
A noiseless place
To water the roses of your soul with sentimental clouds,
No more, you need an extra key to enter
Your beloved’s home at night;
In sleep, the beloved who neglected you during her painful times
Will come to you—
The beloved who hid her passions
In the spring of her startled cheeks and eyelids.
***
In sleep, it is not a sin to date
Any of the ladies who once captivated your youth with her eyelash
And who loved you against her family’s wish.
You merrily travel in your dreams towards the secret
Of the muddled planet in the eyelids of those whom you have seduced on the beaches of silence last time.
You are no more obsessed to know the lady who ignored your glamour coming from the past memories;
No woman can resist your masculine scent,
Tonight.
***
In sleep, friendssquat on the soft rug
Of your heart;
That lady, who granted you intimacy for a time, visits you;
And there come those you have waited;
Among them is a strange child you hardly remember;
The child who keeps looking at you when you ignore him;
And whenever you come close to him, you feel strange!
That strange child bears within his hands a blind lantern;
You have no knowledge of his secret;
And when you try to get a spark from his fire,
You drown in darkness!
Your attempts at reading the absence of his features exhaust you.
His eyes are but thorns of the past
That attack your eyelids like sharp arrows whenever you look.
Tears Rolling down Her Salted Burning Lips
We were building sand homes near thecoast
When he left for fishing, for the last time…
We raced to return the trimmings of his net
To his little canoe.
With little hands
We waved unceasingly to the last wave
That snatched his boat away,
Away from the times of our childhood.
***
Behind the window bars, our little heads squeezed;
With eyes fixed on the coast road;
Mother’s wings spread over our little shoulders
As she injected her body among ours;
Immensely worried about our budding innocent souls.
Scared that her long hair may submit to the winds,
If she bent forward on the metal railing,
I drew her back towards the warmness of the timber room.
Then I stared at the seashores in her eyes,
And saw the sea travelling far beyond the sand homes.
“Sure, he will return,” she said,
Before her tear floored upon my lips— mysalted burning lips.
Twenty years did not avail to demolish the sand homes
In our eyes.
The dried out face of my father laid upon the waves
Became a window that looks at the silver years of our age;
An age abandoned in muddy traps.
Still, my beloved mother conceals her regrets behind her shadow.
Still, on the mornings,
She makes fresh bread with her dreams;
And at midnights,
She reheats what remains of her wishes on the stove of her soul.
Still, we believe her and eat the bread of her lie,
Just to live on.
