قصيدة “مرايا الروح” مترجمة للإنجليزية، للشاعر محمود النجار

The mirrors of Soul

WRITER: Mahmoud Annajjar

TRANSLATOR: Hajer Mabrouki

Dying ,

The night comes

Vomiting my soul

As a sparkling fire which has just

 been extinguished

And the place got sad

Its hot flames surrendered to the 

earth belly,

As a sea of ruin

The fire wasn’t neither cold nor peace

It was a volcano sipping a much more

 violent volcano

From the night sins

It was an eye-catching thunderbolts,

Committing sin,

Throwing stones,

And making everything around it as a 

storm where death extends.

As my eylashes were glued to the 

night wall,

I was emerging from history,

Fleeing from the horizon which 

limited pigeons, from sheep herders and 

pastures’grass, and from the rituals 

of tribe ; as an arrow thrown by a 

hand and escped a constraint. It 

ignored the sunrise. It sipped its drink 

above clouds. It shed its poor

 structure above clouds and proceeded its 

ailing body as a dry rod,

.. the clouds wept.

The anemone flourished from its blood

Each herder made its flute cry

And the mountain goat bleating got loud

Something here assasinates seasons’ souls.

Oh this night !

The heart comes blind

It neither sees moon face

Nor stars’light.

It is not sight blindness

It is that of hearts..

Oh long night ! disappear !

Because the heart is confined

To fire bond,

Crucified between my soul an distance ;

A silence moaning and there is no Jasmin,

… no dew.

A voice from desert shouts :

You. Whose turban of existential worry. Slowly !

Get back your forgotten address !

Escape your old ugliness !

It’s enough abhorrence

That you sleep on your gloomy visions

And you persist in your loyalty to exiles

Till travelling takes you toward an ocean f despair

not ending with light.

Walking on your Colocynth expelled from life fertility ,

Words fall from your feet, poetry

Where letters fight.

Frightened, Henna runs away from your lips.

Words’ pointers follow you

Searching you in your lazy ribs

In your bleeing argil

Since you’ve left the wedding of threshing floor

Surrounded with prayers ,

Since you’ve been stolen by the Great Apostasy Fire

And since the night slept in your chest

The night slept … the night slept

Ghosts absorbing grass from your lungs,

Throwing horror in your heart

And taking your last glimpse of eye.

Longing killing you

All gardens of lovers in your eyes

Are either prickle or fire

Here is your pride disable !

A pyramid but of ash

A throne of straw grew

And your wishe are without eylashes

Keeping secrets from wind storm

.. the dust overpower them.

Your lips are disable to kiss the dew

Your pores are spilling your moanings in the day lip

And poisoning flowers.

They seek fleeing from whiteness,

To the far exiles

They walk , playing with white mirrors

.. preceeding siege to siege.

A loiterer

As a shroud toward abandance kinds

Silence tears him

Worried about the longe distance

Fear wears you

Lament slaps you.

Cold

You unpick what your mother wove with tears

Still your heart sick

Still your ribs weak

And you stay crying alone

Far away

From coming back.

When your friends’vales left you,

You’ve gone seeking a refuge

You’ve gone seeking Karbalaa

In distance

It may give you sense to the world ,

While everything toward you is committing recession.

It’s enough that you don’t whisper to night like the other poets

You yelp as wolf, lost in the desert

It fell yelping and opened its eyes to wind

Its eyelids bled heavily ,

.. the Day got murdered.

Whenever the illusions of wishes exhaust you, be a spider

Hidden behind the speech… afraid of poetry smell

… of words

When they suddenly come pregnant

So, you get burdened with the definite time of talk.

It’s enough that your pores haven’t got any burgeon

Shining when the air pour the desire of lovers on your arm

Or when the afternoon inhales Jasmin on your heart.

If a pigeon kisses you

Your lips get hidden behind two clouds

Or if lovers spray you with with Jonquil

You bleed of moanings.

Be black as the depth of fire

Or as a sea of hellfire !

Silent is the appeal..

The desert has been lost in the afternoon cave

All feature of words around me,

Like locuts.. shaking me

And my body ulcers are complaining pus.

A twenty years ago

Debating, bleeding and anger

A lost round after another..

I waked up.

And I was reborn from the pain of fig trees

My clusters which held my heart as an embryo faded.

I set a fire

I said I drink a coffee

May be my heart gets stronger

May be it quickens the end of the exile

May be the moments get broken

I get out of mirrors’ illusion

I split my fear door into two halves

May be it kills the last breathes of the long night

And the end of heavy night falling be above me.

Ah ! How much night scourges was pasted in my back !

How much its fingers’ tenderness was printed on my face !

And how much its curtains was dropped on my chest !

I spent my age wishing

That bars flee a little from my prison

To turn back like all returners from blackness

Seeking, in moaning, Salma

Who spread a long age on my sigh

I don’t know which sigh..

While my age was lost between sigh and sigh.

Your eyes haven’t slept

My eyes too..

The night is stinging your dawn hidden in my eyes when the morning 

approches.

Ah ! If you know how many fissures on my heart walls still burning like fire !

How much my eyes wept appologizing !

As a child… still crying..

While the black mirrors are killig the Day..

Mahmoud Annajjar