Sadder Than Water - Samih Al-Qasim

 Most poetry I read that is translated is from Spanish - or another Romantic language - with some small exceptions here of late but it is less expansive than that. It basically means I can't check the translations for their accuracy because the script and language are out of my ability. I think the closest in style and trust of the translator's portrayal is Nazim Hikmet. I briefly talked about reading Beyond the Walls, and may have mentioned how I'm trying to read Human Landscapes but I haven't gotten far. It feels like it will give me the same feelings that Sadder Than Water has.

I don't have too many words to add onto my feelings about the poems here - a collection of poems that cover the entirety of his life - but the notions in the preface and online talk of him as a poet of nationalistic ideas as well as a revolutionary and connect his poems to resistance. For specifics, al-Qasim was Druze and Palestinian living in Israel which has obvious complications to one's existence but also on a deeper level to my base covering by those identities. He is, as I found good wording, a writer who has to be understood through pan-Arab ideals. However, I think to compare that with nationalism as those same descriptions of him do, we more politically understand it as a disservice which simplifies things. Maybe the only comparative feeling of recent I've had, is reading a newspaper praise and revere Kwame Nkrumah and then continually denounce communists/praise Eisenhower. "Seems a little shy of getting it but ok."

Al-Qasim's poems beg an eternal notion of being resistant to the orientalism and violence of the "west" and denies placement that subjects people further than the world has already made motion to. They are not revolutionary on themselves, but they speak knowledge and involve themselves in the absolute regard of the politics of language. The eponymous poem is my favorite but is far too long to type out for you here but I took a few of the translations and they're located below.

I Don't Blame You

Your wing is too small for the wind,
and I don't blame you -
afraid and lovely.
I am the storm.
I was a wing
and floundered within
the storm, for ages,
and now have become the storm!

But there is no light
or shade,
no language that's sufficient.
And now, I admit it: Here
I am, a star
in worlds that are lost,
and I do not blame you.
What has the mint
to do with misfortune?
-

Story of a City

There was a blue city
that dreamt of foreigners wandering
around and spending their money
day after day.

But it became a black city
despising strangers
with their rifles' muzzles
making the rounds of its cafes...
-

A Star

You two hands upon my shoulder,
your waist between my hands.
My eyes are on you,
and yours on me.
My heart is at your lips,
and yours at mine.
Fire celebrates fire,
water celebrates water,
and wind - the wind.

In the festival of mysterious space,
we live,
as the earth slips from beneath our feet,
departing in its distant circuit.
Stars go out,
and we gleam like a star,
its secrets refining anarchic space... 
-

Excerpts from... Sadder Than Water

...
You distanced yourself from yourself.
So that you might remain
on the land.
You will remain.
(People were useless...the land was useless
but you'll dwell on.)
And in the land there is nothing,
nothing but you
and what remained of time's struggles
after the miserable season's removal.

...
And you stand in the doorway of the will,
your voice trickling, your silence bleeding,
extracting the bullets from your family portraits,
following the missiles' path
into the heart of your household things
counting the holes from the bombs' shrapnel
within the body of the sleeping girl -
kissing the wax of her soft fingers
at the end of the bier.
How can you mold the elegies' madness?
How can you gather the dates of your dead
along the homeland's misty roads?
Or take into your arms
the body of your sleeping girl?

...
Masks reveal the most accurate details.
Chaos leaves well-ordered rites to chance.
And a few hyenas surround the table of treats,
their white napkins around their hairy necks.
They raise their knives
and aim their forks at their gourmet meal,
fed up with the remnants of corpses.
Hyenas. Guests of honor.
Hyenas. What is all this china for?
And why this opulence?
Why?

...
And you stay on in the end, in the distance,
a sick angel
hovering over the roof of your home.
Manna and quail descend
on Sinai's fire. This delicious grill is your trial.
Chew your asceticism if you choose.
Forget the offerings.
Your charming grooms are food for sharks.
Nor does the Nile demand
the flesh of virgins. Fertility's
subject to none of your vacant entreaties.
Here is the cornerstone
and you wander, thirsty,
a sick angel at your people's doors.
The wind is cold and fierce.

...
Inspect your limbs when lightning flashes.
Rise! The rousing of volcanoes
is arduous, after the boring dormancy.
Rousing the victims is arduous.
Don't wait for the body's appearance
within the deception of mirrors.
Inspect your heart's arteries
and the vastness of your fright.
Destroy the mirage of mirrors.
Leave the ruins of your love
when lightning sadly flashes.
Sadder. Sadder than sadness.

...
To your own exhausted toothbrush
you disclose the secrets of your utter aloneness.
And with your comb you scribble on sheets of vapor.
Are you recording, I wonder,
your will's worry on mirrors?

...
Will you grieve? The grief isn't yours.
So grieve because you grieve
and cross to the other shore.

...
And this is your shirt-your dusty banner,
and your good cloud.
All the hangers know the collar
of its tired sorrow
and know its terrible secrets.
Is it your shirt or your living skin
that's hanging between the earth and heavens?
Are those your veins or their barren strings?
Your shirt or living skin? It's all the same.
God has thrust you into the trial.
God has brought you into the trial.
And your lifeline is near and far away, 
and you're at once at home and in exile.
Your necktie is the gallows' knot.