Listen to the Mourners: The Essential Poems of Nāzik Al-Malā’ika

by Nāzik Al-Malā’ika, ‘Abdulwāḥid Lu’lu’a (Translator)

This is one of the first book-length English translations of Nāzik Al-Malā’ika’s Arabic poetry. One of the most influential Iraqi poets of the twentieth century, Nāzik Al-Malā’ika pioneered the modern Arabic verse movement when she broke away from the formalistic classical modes of Arabic poetry that had prevailed for more than fifteen centuries. Along with ʻAbdulwahhāb Al-Bayyāti and Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb, she paved the way for the birth of a new modernist poetic movement in the Arab world. Until now, very little of Al-Malā’ika’s poetry has been translated into English. Listen to the Mourners contains forty of her most significant poems selected from six published volumes, including Life Tragedy and a Song for Man , The Woman in Love with the Night , Sparks and Ashes , The Wave’s Nadir , The Moon Tree , and The Sea Alters Its Colours . These poems show the beginning of her development from the late romantic orientation in Arabic poetry toward a more psychological approach. Her poetic form shows a significant liberation from the traditional two-hemistich line in traditional Arabic poetry, which adheres to the traditional Arabic measures of prosody and rhyme. ‘Abdulwāḥid Lu’lu’a’s introduction functions as a critical analysis of the liberated verse movement of the era and situates the poet among her Arab and Western counterparts. This accessible, beautifully rendered, and long overdue translation fills a gap in modern Arabic poetry in translation and will interest students and scholars of Iraqi literature, Middle East studies, women’s studies, and comparative literature.

Genres: Poetry

142 pages, Hardcover

Published November 15, 2021

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[Sandro]

11. RAINY NIGHT
Now, my star, you disappear, though it is not yet the setting-time?
Now, while the fair night casts your light on the fields, And the flowers and the night are elated with your fair rise?
As the river and banks laugh under the palm trees.
Now you decided to go! What tragedy for the withering beauty!
Oh, my star held by the hand of comprehensive fog Oh, night philosopher, oh secret of distrait existence, In vain are songs to the lights of a setting star.
In vain I stayed up the night, gazing, overwhelmed by anguish, Taking the last look at your languid light, Composing elegies on your departing youth,
Weaving the light of my tears, for every setting star.
For pity, my pretty star, when is my night end?
When will the clouds be clear, and my gloom end?
My heart desires to feel silence under my canopy of trees.
As my eyes traverse the space with guitar in my hand.
I have been waiting for calm, but there is only the rain's echo, And the wind, moaning to the evening, among the trees.
No bird is fluttering in the fields, no fragrance, no flowers, Nothing but thunder, telling of the human grief.
Out of the dark rose moans of the branches' dove,
Whose nest was blown away by the wind, spoiling her dear abode.
Perplexed, with shivering wings, wounded under the dark, Pity, Lord of storms, enough is the pouring rain for us.
Where is the fair space, the clarity, the star-light?
Who gathered the grim rain, and sent the clouds, in the grim night?
Oh, wind, be kind to me, to the bowers and vines, Be kind to the meadow dove, so wearied by cares.
In my heart were hopes that you betrayed, O winds, There were charms in this evening that you effaced, There were vine canopies in the fair meadow that you withered, There were stars in the sky seas that you turned off.
In the grim night I remained, listening to the grim rain, On my mouth was the strange tune, shaped by my strange heart, Through the windows peeps to me the horrible night darkness.
In the high feed my fireplace, as the flames will die now.
The storm has destroyed my two windows, and the light was gone, And now there is no light around me except the lightning, O horizon uproar, oh, sky rain,
Now I plead for sleep until tomorrow, so farewell!



18. THE THREAD TIED TO THE CYPRESS TREE
(1)
In the dark, street blackness, and deaf silence,
Where there is no color except that of darkening nights, Where the oleander tree loosens its gloom, A shadow on the surface of the earth, A voice told me a story, then it receded, And faded in the night its lips.
(2)
A story of the love, which your heart thought dead, But it is still an explosion and life.
Tomorrow, desire will press you to me, You will call me to exhaustion, Memory will press on your chest,
A burden of madness, so you can touch nothing, Anything, a dream, a gentle word, Anything, the road will call you, And you wake up.
The night will see you alone, on the road, Asking the distant past To return.
The dreaming street and the oleander
Will see you walking,
Your eyes colored by excitement and delight, With love and feelings on your face, Everything in your very depth is painted there.
And I, myself, can see, From my dark, distant, drowsy place,
Can see the happy dream
Behind your eyes, defeatedly calling And finally, you see the house, Our house, where we met,
When our love was that naive child, Its color in our lips,
Its youth quivers in our hands.

Tied to the cypress tree, you do not know when?
And why? It was not there Two months ago. Your lips were about To ask the sister about that short thread.
Why did they tie it? And when?
The sound rings in your ear: "She died...."
And you stare vacantly,
To see the thread as ropes of ice,
Tied by arms that vanished, and were overwhelmed by death, Thousands of centuries ago.
And you see the sad face, magnified in your eyes By clouds of horror. "She died."
(4)
"She died."... An utterance without meaning,
An echo of an empty hammer that rises, then vanishes.
You are not concerned with its monotonous repetition.
All that you see now is the strange thread.
Did she tie it? Then rises that boring sound Of "She died" thundering, not vanishing, Filling the night with cries and thunder.
"She died," an echo, clearly whispered by the sound, A call reverberated by the darkness,
Related by the cypress trees, in a deep voice.
"She died" is what the storms say.
"She died" is an echo, crying in the deep stars.
And you can almost hear it now, behind the veins.
(5)
The sound of "She died" was ringing everywhere.
This empty hammer in the ear of lime.
The sound "she died" is suffocating like a serpent.
Every letter is a nerve, panting in your chest in horror.
A vision of a red gallows without a heart.
An attack of a twitching paw, snapping fiercely.
An echo of a hellish, harsh voice,

Is this empty hammer: She died,
She died, and the world does not hold her any more.
In vain you ask darkness about her.
In vain you listen to her footsteps.
In vain you look for her in the moon.
In vain you dream that one day you will see her Anywhere except in the depth of memory.
She disappeared behind the stars.
And turned a blink of a dream.
(6)
Then, here you are, without movements, Tired, about to collapse on the passage floor.
Your deranged eyes, tied over there,
To a thread tied to the cypress, folding a thousand secrets.
That strange thread, That dubious riddle,
It is all that is left of your withered, melancholy love.
(7)
The night sees you walking to return:
The thread in your hand, the shiver, and the thundering nerve.
"She died," and you go distrait,
Fondling with the thread, folding, and turning Its end on your thumb, as there is nothing else left.
All that deep love has left you
Is this thread and the utterance of "She died." And every other whisper was folded out.





21. THE FUGITIVES
Till when shall we go on wandering in distant lands?
Mirage trifles with us,
One low land turns us to another, And the road bend deceives us.
***
Why did we come? The sea asks us: What do we want?
The wind carriages follow us, and repeat,
Repeating the question.
But there is no answer except the boredom lines
On our silent faces in the long nights.
We flee, but they catch us anew.
***
The horizon asks us: Where do we travel? Where do we go?
From what did we escape? And why? To what end?
In our silence
There are hearts beating; the fall of hopes On our distress is unbearable joy.
So let us look for a wound of a small grief.
***
As we walk, we hear the night deriding our secret, Following us in the dark, instigating the winds against us.
The road asks:
Why do we wander in this deep, deep world, Followed by our past, our visions, and a friend's face?
Until when shall we flee from our shadow?
***
In our walk in darkness, we see the moon's derision.
The cool light angers us, and some trees Block our way.
The sunset ridicules us,

Saying we are searching for the impossible And that, despite our hopes, we are human.
***
From the sides of the paths, we hear one evening An echo whispering in the night that we are... Cowards.
We fear the sunset.
We depart, not out of desire for departure But to flee from ourselves, from a long struggle, From the fact that we are still outsiders.
***
And here we are, where we started, Wandering in the terrible dark;
A winter dying, questions not answered by a spring.
Bewildered eyes.
Our future asks us who we are,
And leaves us, in the fog of centuries, our past.
O night, O sea, where are we lost?
(USA, January 1951)