Libyan Poetry in English

Ali Sidqi Abdulqader had been one of Libya,s most prominent poets. Born in Tripoli, and began publishing his poems in the Libyan media , obsessed mostly by both : his devotion twards his country,the surrounding majour trends, and his love for his mother whom he had always remeberd and embodyed. Later his daughters became a source of poetic inspiration, bringing high sensetivity and growing purity to his tone. He had publish several poetry collectins, one of which had its title as ( The braids of my Mother ). Ali Sidqi died at the age of 90, leaving a pile of poems which he cointinued to write untill his last days in a hospital in Tripoli ,

In his last poem he was expreessing in most impressive words his love for places and the small details to wich he was ever attatched as they had been to him signes of affinity in which he remembers his life.

The translations presented below, might be the latest in his life, presented to him at the hospital days before his passing away. However, his poems were translated - as he told - to several languages before, among the was English.

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To you my mother

Come

You are my mother

But She did not hear

not looked at my voice

if she did

She would have seen it

Holding leaves of an olive tree

…a nest of a white pigeon

…if she had looked

She would have seen something in my look

She would have seen her sweet things

On her dress I cultivate and harvest the season's fruit

If she had looked

She would have seen her first child

…toys in my eyes

With them I amuse myself with my friends

Across my face she would have seen the door of our room

The arch of our narrow lane

Saada our cat

The washed up whit swaddles

My swaddle as a child

She would have seen first words stumbling on my lips

While I'm calling (mummy)

she would overwhelm me with a thousand springs

But she did not hear my calls

Carrying on in the crowd of the great square

I ran after her, shouting

Oh, my mother

At the turning of the street, and every body heard me

But she did not

I called her: oh you my mother

I'm your son

She was a woman on whose face there were things from my mother

On her front there was a lock

I swear it was from hair of my mother

A black rain on it

I wished I could embrace her feet holds

In the great square

And even the street packed with people with all that it contained

To embrace her

To embrace the one on whose face there is my mother

To wash her chest with child's tears

As a frightened child I cry on your chest

Because I have not yet grown

I'm your child

Three songs

Apples of Sunday

I saw her in the Sunday eve.

I heard her, heard days in the ring of time

Saying to me from the ring of time

Carried by the years

Saying to me: come

Here is for you a punch of yesterday's memories

A jar of the past evenings

A glance of the arch of the family's old house

Pouring in the lane the noises of the children

And the epoch in a chariot of which the horses are days

I saw her on the Sunday, s eve

Thus her steps sprouted roses

And her laughter created promises

Thus spring woke up in my joyful vase

And my window which had been so long gloomy, smiled

My curtains sipped her dress colures, which were spreading out of the basket of apples

The pillow and visions

And she smiled saying:

Do you remember?

The blue letter

The characters of which are wings of Martin in the sky

The words are small as children's toys

Simple as children's toys

Yesterday they had been the freed words

Contained in a letter

A gate leading to a Spring

To a Nahawand which smashes frost

Yesterday I used to be content with characters written in a letter

Lofty with figs and pomegranates

I squeeze them as a lit tale

To my cat, to my room on a rainy night

In the past the character in my life used to be every thing

Stuffing my pillow, my bed with visions

Visiting me in my dream ten full nights

And now, the tickling of characters fill me no more

Since my vine tree had dropped its leaves

Since I had become a mother

No longer sated me

As I want warmth not ice

The city of life

I have tried so I could manage to sate her eye with presents

But her eye is so, so wide

The presents melt between her eye lashes

The walls are high

Night and day pour into them

The songs of suns and moons

And I came to her with pearls and corundum

She turned away and closed her eye lids shyly

And rained tears of pride

Because she despised the corundum and oysters

I came to her with a boat, the woods of which are fragrant with cense

The sail of which is from a feather of a blackbird

And she closed her eye lids and lowered her head shyly

Because she does not desire the winds and the seas

And I came to her with a jasmine from the plants of my country

White as the soft whispers

She closed her eyelids and turned away shyly

Because the age of jasmine is hours of a night, would seas to live in the morning

And would be nothing but a mummified corpse

And I came to her with this blue poem

The characters of which, I had melted in a flask of chanting

I had melted them in the evening

And she opened her eye lids and the meadows turned green

And in the eyes the city of life opened

Her eye lids are the city of life

Translated by Abdulrazzak Elmazi

Revised by Yusef Berreesh