Tor Ulven, Selected Poems

I shall marry the goldsmith's dead daughter

1

i stand under a tree of hungry hands

no

i stand under nothing

2

i am heading to an absolute

isolation solitude and emptiness

mile after mile of desert I left behind me

and last city passed a long time

i am heading to a great despair

to a doubt

that may be vanished only by major doubts

3

why do i stand silent if i have a mouth

why do i stand still if I have feet

why don't I see if I have eyes

why don't i scream if i am caught in this misery

because i am made of stone

4

there is something i cannot reach

i do not know what it is

i stretch the arms out after it

air air… air

5

what are you looking for in the sky

i'm looking for a constellation that doesn't exist

6

in the human sphere there are not well

so many significant things:

nails brain bones

*

I by my own eyes have to

access darkness.

and calmness

on the other side of them.

But who could to say

the difference

between black and green?

Who lives

and moves

in your hands

when you examine them under light

a short moment?

Many. The same

who have never

existed.

Who exists and does not

exist, exactly

now?

The forest is alive

You can smell the odor

of the fir branches

amidst the night. The wind

whizzes

In you. In us.

*

I will travel

to Eridu

and I will create my broken

jars with red images

of the red-horn goat.

and the streaming water, which

steers

and drinks all of us.

I will travel

home

to Eridu

and marry

the goldsmith's dead

daughter.

sitting on the threshold

in the evening, I hear the neighbour’s laughter

and the reborn flies

around the glare of the oil lamp.

*

The suffering

has no seat

to alight on.

You pursue oaks

inside a church.

Yes! now I suddenly see

the chestnut tree

you are thinking about, in darkness

the white flowers,

we are dust.

The slide

of a smile.

Projected on the hedge

a late summer night, the shadows

of insects

that chase, perhaps

a swallow.

Tor Ulven

(1953–1995)

Tor Ulven was a Norwegian poet. He is considered one of the major poets of the Norwegian post-war era, and he won several major literary prizes in Norwegian literature.

His early works, consisting of traditional modernist verse poetry, were heavily influenced by André Breton and the surrealist movement. As the 1980s progressed he developed a more independent voice, both stylistically and thematically. The later part of his work consists mainly of prose. He committed suicide in 1995 in Oslo, the city where he was born.

Ono no Komachi

Selected Poems

1

Though I go to you

ceaselessly along dream paths,

the sum of those trysts

is less than a single glimpse

granted in the waking world.

2

How sad,

the end that waits me -

to think at last

I'll be a mere haze

pale green over the fields.

3

Blossoms blooming

Yet making no seed are

The sea-god's

Garlanded

Whitecaps offshore.

4

On such a night as this

When no moon lights your way to me,

I wake, my passion blazing,

My breast a fire raging, exploding flame

While within me my heart chars.

5

The flowers withered

Their color faded away

While meaninglessly

I spent my days in the world

And the long rains were falling.

6

A thing which fades

With no outward sign

Is the flower

of the heart of man

In this world!

7

Whose bloom will fade,

And yet the color does not show,

Is this alone:

In the world of love the flower

That opens in the human heart.

8

In this bay

There is no seaweed

Doesn't he know it -?

The fisherman who persists in coming

Until his legs grow weary?

9

More heart-wrenching than

To sear my body with live coals

Against my flesh,

Bidding farewell on Miyakoshima's shore

As you part for the capital.

10

Did he appear,

because I fell asleep

thinking of him?

If only I'd known I was dreaming

I'd never have wakened.

11

The autumn night

is long only in name -

We've done no more

than gaze at each other

and it's already dawn.

12

When longing for him

tortures me beyond endurance,

I reverse my robe -

Garb of night, black as leopard-flower berries -

And wear it inside out.

13

Since encountering my beloved

While I dozed,

I have begun to feel

that it is dreams, not reality,

on which I can rely.

14

Tears that but form gems on sleeves

Must come, I think,

from an insincere heart,

for mine, though I seek to repress them,

gush forth in torrents.

15

Yielding to a love

that knows no limit,

I shall go to him by night -

for the world does not yet censure

those who tread the paths of dreams.

16

I know nothing

about villages

where fisher folk dwell;

why must you keep demanding

to be shown the seashore?

17

Now that I am entering

the winter of life,

your ardor has faded

like foliage ravaged

by late autumn rains.

18

How bitter it is to see

autumnal blasts

strike the rice ears;

I shall, I fear,

reap no harvest.

19

This body

grown fragile, floating,

a reed cut from its roots...

If a stream would ask me

to follow, I'd go, I think.

20

Men call love

Is simply

a chain

preventing escape

from this world of care.

21

His heart, grown cold,

has become my body's autumn.

Many sorrowful words

may yet fall

like the rustling leaves.

22

I thought to pick

the flower of forgetting

for myself,

but I found it

already growing in his heart.

23

Those gifts you left

have become my enemies:

without them

there might have been

a moment's forgetting.

24

Submit to you -

could that be what you are saying?

The way ripples on the water

submit to an idling wing?

25

The pine tree by the rock

must have its memories too:

after a thousand years,

see how its branches

lean toward the ground.

26

The hunting lanterns

on mount Ogura have gone,

the deer are calling for their mates...

How easily I might sleep

if only I didn't share their fears.

27

Since this body

was forgotten

by the one who promised to come,

my only thought is wondering

whether it even exists.

28

This abandoned house

shining

in the mountain village -

how many nights

has autumn spent there?

29

If, in an autumn field,

a hundred flowers

can untie their streamers,

may I not also openly frolic,

as fearless of blame?

30

While watching

the long rains falling on this world

my heart, too, fades

with the unseen color

of the spring flowers.

31

Seeing the moonlight

spilling down

through these trees,

my heart fills to the brim

with autumn.

32

Upon my breast

floats a boat of heartbreak

and I have just embarked;

there's not a single day when waves

do not soak my sleeves.

Ono no Komachi

(c. 825—c. 900)

Ono no Komachi (小野小町?, c. 825—c. 900) was a famous Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the Six best Waka poets of the early Heian period. She was noted as a rare beauty; Komachi is a symbol of a beautiful woman in Japan. She is also numbered as one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.

The place of Komachi's birth and death is uncertain. According to one tradition, she was born in what is now Akita Prefecture, daughter of Yoshisada, "Lord of Dewa". Her social status is also uncertain. She may have been a low-ranking consort or a lady-in-waiting of an emperor, possibly Emperor Ninmyō (r. 833-850).

As a poet, Komachi specialized in erotic love themes, expressed in complex poems. Most of her waka are about anxiety, solitude or passionate love. She is the only female poet referred to in the preface of the Kokin Wakashū, which describes her style as "containing naivety in old style but also delicacy".

There are legends about Komachi in love. The most famous is a story about her relationship with Fukakusa no Shosho, a high-ranking courtier. Komachi promised that if he visited her continuously for a hundred nights, then she would become his lover. Fukakusa no Shosho visited her every night, but failed once towards the end. Despairing, he fell ill and subsequently died. When Komachi learned of his death she was overcome with sadness.

The Wine of Love

The Wine of Love

Of the Wine of Love

quench me!

And the sorrows of my heart

will be forgotten

An Existence without love

A creek without water

Goddess with the aurora face

You are the Path of Hope

inebriate me kissing my soul!

For kisses are the Wine of soul

If you bestow lavishly

Then unite me!

Like the lovers

Or if you believe it better,

then lament me

Under the shades of Jasmine

The Lyrics of an Arabic folk poem

Laughing

Laughing

 
Echo of my body

Tree of deserted houses

She who chooses among my words

The words i myself have chosen

When I hear her name I forget all words
She is my sorrow and my knowledge

Bride of spirit and instincts

Mother of desires

Mute cry

Stars of my night

She who carries my sword and its wreckage

She who knows how to tame

Who surpasses the flowers in the orchards

Who vanquishes the fruits of wilderness

Blue lily of melancholy

Laughing Laughing Laughing

 

Ounsi el-Hajj

 
- Born in 1937.
- Son of journalist and translator Louis El Hage, and of Marie Akl, from Kaitouli, Jezzine (South of Lebanon).
- Did his school studies in the "Lycée français", then in "La Sagesse" High School.
- Began to publish short stories, essays and poems in literary magazines since 1954, while he was still a high school student.
- Started exercising daily journalism professionally
in Al Hayat in 1956, as director of the cultural page. Then he moved to An Nahar
newspaper, where he edited for years the non political pages, and transformed
the daily cultural column into a daily cultural page.

- In 1964, he founded and published "Al Mulhaq", the weekly cultural supplement of An Nahar newspaper, until 1974, with the cooperation of Chawki Abi Chakra during the first half of the above-mentioned period.

- In 1957, he contributed with Youssef Khal and Adonis to the foundation of the poetry magazine "Shi'r", and in 1960 he published in the latter's editions his first poetry book, "Lan", the first compilation of poems in prose in Arabic language.
- Published six compilations of poetry: Lan (1960), The chopped head (1963), The past of forthcoming days (1965), What have you made with the gold what have you done with the rose (1970), The Messenger with her hair long until the sources (1975), The banquet (1994).
- Also published a book of essays in 3 volumes under the title of "Words, words, words", and a book of philosophical contemplations and aphorisms in two volumes: "Khawatem". The third volume of Khawatem is to appear soon, as well as a set of unpublished works.
- Was editor-in-chief of several magazines, simultaneously with his permanent work in An Nahar, among which "Al Hasna" magazine in 1966 and "Arab and international Nahar" between 1977 and 1989.
- Starting 1963, he translated more than ten plays of Shakespeare, Ionesco, Camus and Brecht into Arabic, plays that have been staged by the school of modern acting (Baalbek festival) as well as by directors Nidal Al Ashkar, Roger Assaf and Berge Vaslian.
- Married to Layla Daou (since 1957), father of Nada and Louis.
- Editor-in-chief of An Nahar newspaper from 1992 till September 30, 2003.
- A choice of his poems has been translated into French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Armenian and Finnish.
- An anthology of his poetry, "Flying eternity", was published in French by the publishing house "Actes Sud" in Paris in 1997, and another anthology entitled "Love and the fox, Love and the others", appeared in a bilingual German /Arabic edition in Berlin in 1998. The first was supervised and introduced by Abdel Kader Janabi, and the second translated by Khaled Al Maali and Herbert Becker.
-Summarizing his biography to answer a question by Professors Nabil Ayoub, Hind Adib d'Orléans and George Kallas in the setting of an interview edited by poet Elias Lahoud in the "contemporary writings" magazine (issue 38 - August / September 1999), Ounsi El Hage declared:
"I often told the same history. I don't believe that it is of any interest to anyone. I have more remorse than achievements, and all that I have done I did without my knowledge. When nobody used to ask me for my opinion on things, such as love and death, I willingly said the truth, but then I stopped saying it as soon as there was someone to ask".

Divine love

Divine love

I have two loves for you

That of passion and that of your merits

For the passion

I need bring to mind only you

But for the love of your merits

The universe goes unseen

While you are not before me

It is not to myself

That I must give thanks

But to you in this manifold love

Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah

(717–801)

Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya (Arabic: رابعة العدوية القيسية‎) or simply Rābiʻa al-Basrī (Arabic: رابعة البصري‎) (717–801 C.E.) was a female Muslim Sufi saint.

She was born between 95 and 99 Hijri in Basra, Iraq.

She was the fourth daughter of her family and therefore named Rabia, meaning "fourth". Although not born into slavery, her family were poor yet respected in the community.

According to Farid al-Din Attar, Rabia's parents were so poor that there was no oil in house to light a lamp, nor a cloth even to wrap her with. Her mother asked her husband to borrow some oil from a neighbor, but he had resolved in his life never to ask for anything from anyone except the Creator. He pretended to go to the neighbor's door and returned home empty-handed.

In the night, Prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream and told him, "Your newly born daughter is a favorite of the Lord, and shall lead many Muslims to the right path. You should approach the Amir of Basra and present him with a letter in which should be written this message: 'You offer Durood to the Holy Prophet one hundred times every night and four hundred times every Thursday night. However, since you failed to observe the rule last Thursday, as a penalty you must pay the bearer four hundred dinars '.

Rabia's father got up and went straight to the Amir with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The Amir was delighted on receiving the message, knowing that he was in the eyes of Prophet. He distributed 1000 dinars to the poor and joyously paid 400 dinars to Rabia's father. The Amir then asked Rabia's father to come to him whenever he required anything, as the Amir would benefit very much by the visit of such a soul dear to the Lord.

After the death of her father, a famine overtook Basra and Rabia parted from her sisters. Legend has it that she was accompanying a caravan, which fell into the hands of robbers. The chief of the robbers took Rabia captive, and sold her in the market as a slave. The new master of Rabia used to take hard service from her.

She would pass the whole night in prayer, after she had finished her household jobs. She spent many of her days observing fast.

Once the master of the house got up in the middle of the night, and was attracted by the voice in which Rabia was praying to her Lord. She was entreating in these terms:

"Lord! You know well that my keen desire is to carry out Your commandments and to serve Thee with all my heart, O light of my eyes. If I were free I would pass the whole day and night in prayers. But what should I do when you have made me a slave of a human being?"

At once the master felt that it was sacrilegious to keep such a saint in his service. He decided to serve her instead. In the morning he called her and told her his decision; he would serve her and she should dwell there as the mistress of the house. If she insisted on leaving the house he was willing to free her from bondage.

She told him that she was willing to leave the house to carry on her worship in solitude. This the master granted and she left the house.

Rabia went into the desert to pray and became an ascetic. Her murshid was Hazrat Hassan Basri.

Throughout her life, her Love of God, poverty and self-denial did not waver. They were her constant companions. She did not possess much other than a broken jug, a rush mat and a brick, which she used as a pillow. She spent all night in prayer and contemplation, chiding herself if she slept because it took her away from her active Love of God.

As her fame grew she had many disciples. She also had discussions with many of the renowned religious people of her time. Though she had many offers of marriage, and (tradition has it) one even from the Amir of Basra, she refused them as she had no time in her life for anything other than God.

More interesting than her absolute asceticism, however, is the actual concept of Divine Love that Rabia introduced. She was the first to introduce the idea that God should be loved for God's own sake, not out of fear—as earlier Sufis had done.

She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance. She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did. For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils—i.e. hindrances to the vision of God Himself.

Rabia was in her early to mid-eighties when she died, having followed the mystic Way to the end. She believed she was continually united with her Beloved. As she told her Sufi friends, "My Beloved is always with me" She died in Jerusalem in 185 AH.

She was the one who first set forth the doctrine of Divine Love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets. The definitive work on her life and writing was a small treatise (written as a Master's Thesis) over 50 years ago by Margaret Smith .

Much of the poetry that is attributed to her is of unknown origin. After a life of hardship, she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. When asked by Sheikh Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating:

"You know of the how, but I know of the how-less."

She remained celibate and died of old age, an ascetic, her only care from the disciples who followed her. She was the first in a long line of female Sufi mystics.

Belief

Belief

Protean, my heart henceforth assumes all forms: at once

Meadow of gazelles and cloister of the Christians monk

Temple of idols and the pilgrim's Kaaba

The Thora's tablets tantamount

To the Holy Koran's leaves

Religion of love, my allegiance

Wherever its caravans may lead

Just as love is my final faith

Ibn Arabi

Ibn 'Arabī (Arabic: ابن عربي‎) (July 28, 1165 – November 10, 1240) was an Andalusian [Moorish]] Sufi
mystic and philosopher. His full name was Abū 'Abdullāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-`Arabī ('أبو عبد الله محمد بن علي بن محمد بن عربي ).

Born in the Spanish township of Murcia on 17th of Ramaḍān 561 AH (27th or 28 July 1165 AD) with respectable family roots, this unique MOORISH mystic, Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-'Arabī is universally known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (The Greatest Master OT DOCTORUS MAXIMUS in medieval europe). According to some other sources, his birthday was cited as 27th of Ramadan 560 (AH) or in other words August 7, 1165.

To you and for you!

To you and for you!

If only you were aware… o moon

You, who are you…?

You…

You… are all humans!

Bring Me the Flute and Sing!

Bring me the flute and sing

Bring me the flute and sing

for song is the secret of eternity...

And the wailing of the flute remains

even after the end of existence...

Have you taken the forest

rather than the palace

to be your home?

Have you climbed up the creeks and the rocks?

Have you bathed in perfume

and then dried yourself with sunlight?

Have you tasted the wine of the early morning

from goblets of ether?

Bring me the flute and sing

that is the secret of eternity...

And the wailing of the flute remains

even after the end of life...

Have you sat alone at dusk among the grapevines...

Among their clusters hanging like chandeliers of gold...?

Have you made the grass your night-time bed?

Have you wrapped yourself in the evening air

with the sky for a blanket?

So that you can allow the future to come

and let go of the past?

Bring me the flute and sing

so our hearts may be in balance...

And the wailing of the flute remains

even after the end of all sins...

Bring me the flute and sing

forget maladies and their cures…

For people are but lines of poetry

written, but with water.

Kahlil Gibran

(1883-1931)

Khalil Gibran (born Gubran Khalil Gubran bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad; Arabic

جبران خليل

جبران بن ميخائيل بن سعد, January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American

artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose. An early example of Inspirational fiction, the book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture. Gibran is considered to be the third most widely read poet in history, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.

Be my friend!

Be my friend!

How beautiful it would be if we remained friends!
Every woman needs a friend's hand
Needs to hear good words
Be my friend!
I need sometimes to walk with you in a park
To read together poems
I - as a woman - I am happy to hear you
Be my friend!
My hobbies are little
My interests are small
And all my ambition lies:
to walk for hours with you under the rain
When the melody makes me cry
And I'm in sorrow
So why are you interested only in my appearance
And don't look to my brain?
I am very much in need of a harbour of peace...
I am bored of love stories and news
Talk!
Why do you forget half of the words when you meet me?
Be my friend!
There is no diminution of masculinity
However, the men don't accept but the main role!

Suad al-Sabah

Poet, economist, publisher, activist in social change affecting women and children.

Suad Muhammad al-Sabah (also spelled Souad alSabah or Suʿad al-Sabah) was born in 1942 in Kuwait as a member of the ruling family. She graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences at Cairo University in 1973. She obtained a doctorate in economics from Sari Guilford University in the United Kingdom in 1981. She later returned to Kuwait and established the Suad alSabah Publishing and Distribution House. She has published several books of poetry and established a literary prize that carries her name. She also has written hundreds of economic and political essays as well as popular articles in several Arabic local and international newspapers and magazines. Her poetry has been translated into many languages, including English.
Al-Sabah is the director of Kuwait Stock Exchange and a member of the Higher Council for Education, the executive committee of the World Muslim Women Organization for South East Asia, and the board of trustees and the executive committee of the Arab Intellect Forum. She is also a founding member of the Arab Cultural Establishment, the executive committee of the Arab Human Rights Organization, and the Arab Council for Childhood and Development. Her poetry has captured the attention of popular artists as well as university researchers in many countries. Her literary publications include Wamdatt Bakira (Early blinks) and Lahathat min Umri (Moments of my life, 1961). Her scientific works in English include Development Planning in an Oil Economy and the Role of the Woman (1983) and Kuwait: Anatomy of a Crisis Economy (1984).

LOVE SONG

LOVE SONG

Thy face is like a moon that shines on earth,

Like a thick night thy clustering tresses be;

Apples of paradise thy temples are,

And thy deep eyes were lent thee by the sea.

Thou hast arched brows and dark, dark eyes, my love;

Peerless art thou among earth's countless girls.

Thine eyelashes are arrows to my heart;

Thy mouth is a moist tulip, full of pearls.

NAHABED KOUTCHAK

He was an Armenian poet, who lived in the latter part of the 15th century.

Although he wrote only love songs, he is revered as a saint, and his grave near Van is a place of pilgrimage.

Time

Time

I clasp the stem of time

My head a fiery tower

What, then, is this blood

Ever rooted in the sand?

Flaming instants nullify our words

My soul's forgotten its passion's

Purpose, forgotten its heritage

Hidden in house of forms

Forgotten what the rain recounts

What the trees ink inscribes

What cleaves me from myself?

Might I be more than one?

My history, my ruination?

My promised land, my pyre?

Might I be several?

Each interrogating the other?

Who are you and where from?

In this be madness

Then let madness edify

Let madness be my guide

Adonis

Ali Ahmad Said Asbar (Arabic: علي أحمد سعيد إسبر‎; transliterated: alî ahmadi sa'îdi asbar or Ali Ahmad Sa'id) born January 1930, also known by the pseudonym Adonis or Adunis (Arabic: أدونيس), is a Syrian poet and essayist who has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. He has written more than twenty books in his native Arabic.
Adonis is a pioneer of modern Arabic poetry. He is often seen as a rebel, an iconoclast who follows his own rules. "Arabic poetry is not the monolith this dominant critical view suggests, but is pluralistic, sometimes to the point of self-contradiction."
Adonis was considered to be a candidate for the 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, but the awards went to British playwright Harold Pinter, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, British novelist Doris Lessing and French novelist J.M.G. Le Clezio.
In 2007 he was awarded the Bjørnson Prize.

Like water

Like water

The heart is like water

Passions agitate its surface

Rippling water in water

Creature-like, an utterance

Commingles both the good and bad

Like time, human beings body forth

As much of darkness as of light

Just as day illuminates before the night

So an extinguished star begets

Another brilliance

Similar to our vanished forbears

So we, similarly, must disappear

Time alone ensures its own endurance

As plainly as you can plainly see

Strangers in their native land are

Ardent practitioners of good

Whose intimates sever ties and turn

Frequentation to a widening gulf

Remember, should you have sealed

Friendship in the throes of poverty

Should prosperity arrive, remember

Al Ma'arri

Al-Ma'arri (full name in Arabic: أبو العلاء أحمد بن عبد الله بن سليمان التنوخي المعري, Abu al-'Alā Ahmad ibn 'Abd Allāh ibn Sulaimān al-Tanūkhī al-Ma'arri, December 26, 973–May 10 or May 21, 1057) was a blind Arab philosopher, poet and writer. He was a controversial rationalist of his time, he attacked the dogmas of religion, and rejected the claim that Islam possessed any monopoly on truth.

Abu 'Ali al-Muhassin al-Tanukhi (Tanukhi) was born in Syria and lost his sight at the age of four due to smallpox. He hailed from the city of Ma'arra (المعرة) in Syria from which his name derives. He then went on to study in Aleppo, Antioch, and other Syrian towns pursuing a career as a freethinker, philosopher and poet before returning his native town of Ma'arrat al-Numan, where he lived the rest of his life, practicing asceticism and vegetarianism.

He briefly travelled to the center of Baghdad where he drew a great following of both male and female disciples to listen to his lectures on poetry, grammar and rationalism. One of the recurring themes of his philosophy was the rights of reason against the claims of custom, tradition and authority.

Although an advocate of social justice and action, Al-Ma'arri suggested that women should not bear children in order to save future generations from the pains of life.

Al Ma'arri was exerting a notable influence on Dante's "The Divine Comedy". His collection of poems "Unnecessary Necessity" charts the tragic dimension of human experience.

Between yesterday and tomorrow

Between yesterday and tomorrow

Keep yourself from worries and sorrows

Seize with all your might

This fleeting life

Yesterday is already far

Tomorrow not yet arrived

Be happy for a moment

This moment is your life

Fill the bountiful cup

Life is disgrace

Drunkenness is grace.

Omar Khayyam

***

Omar Khayyam

(May 18, 1048 - December 4, 1122)

Was a Persian polymath: mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and above all poet.

As a poet, he is the most famous poet of the East in the West through various adaptations of his rather small number of quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

He has also become established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. Recognized as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times as reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He also contributed to calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus.

His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works have not received the same attention as have his scientific or poetic writings. Zamakhshari referred to him as "the philosopher of the world". Many sources have also testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Ibn Sina in Nayshapur where Khayyam lived most of his life, breathed his last, and was buried and where his mausoleum remains today a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every yea.

Wandering

Wandering

In life I see a treasure

Dilapidated with each night

Days escape this ruination

Only time is undermined

Such days shatter all deception

The man denied a crust of bread

A shirt to close, a time to meet

Will prove himself a hard binger

I rise to combat or for pleasure

Can your opprobrium immortalize?

In your impotence to say my death

Let me contemplate it with my means

Never will I cease to drink

And savor pleasure

In reckless squandering

Of property and heritage

Tarafah ibn al 'Abd (c. 543-569)

Tarafa, or Tarafah ibn al 'Abd ben Sufyan ben Malik al Bakri (Arabic: طرفة بن العبد بن سفيان بن سعد أبو عمرو البكري الوائلي‎), was a 6th century
Arabian poet of the tribe of the Bakr.

After a wild and dissipated youth spent in Bahrain, left his native land after peace had been established between the tribes of Bakr and Taghlib and went with his uncle Al-Mutalammis (also a poet) to the court of the king of Hira, 'Amr ibn-Hind (died 568-9), and there became companion to the king's brother. Hira was as the time a vassal of the Persian
Sasanian Empire. Having ridiculed the king in some verses he was sent with a letter to Dadafruz Gushnasban, the Persian Governor of Southern shores of the Persian Gulf, but Tarafa and his uncle managed to escape underway.

One of his poems is contained in the Mo'allakat.

His Diwan has been published in Wilhelm Ahlwardt's The Diwans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets (London, 1870). Some of his poems have been translated into Latin with notes by B. Vandenhoff (Berlin, 1895).

Woman

Woman

First creature, perpetual knowledge

Crystal-clear water, primeval desire

Everlasting fire

Primitive thrill

Woman, you are the tender secret

If you disappear, the earth will wither

Goodness will fade away from the universe

Source of fertility, means of all life

Woman, you defeated death

Daughter of Canaan, Babylonian melody

Star of the morning, child of the moon

Sister of the sun.

Woman, you are the mother of men

In your hands, you hold the reins of mystery

Your word is a promise,

your promise is virility

Wedding among men

Woman, there I am, signing your glory

Cluster of grapes, taste of the fig

Savour of feast and festivity

Spirit of adventure in us

Celebration of the soul,

near and far

Woman, you are the present and the forever

Despair that haunts us

You are the wise one

Mouth of life

Place of birth

In your hands, you hold will

And carry destiny

Smiling jewel, perfumes shell

Woman, you are ornament and fragrance

Inhabited place, wind and tempest

Violence among men

You are the familiar being

Woman, you are the forgotten prophecy

Abed Azrie
(1945-)

It is also written as Abed Azrié (Arabic: عابد عازرية), is a Syrian singer who performs Arab classical music, although he claims to belong to no particular music tradition.
In his work he sets ancient and modern Arabic texts to traditional instruments (such as the ney, kanun, darbuka, violin, flute and lute), and synthesizers.
He was born in Aleppo, and after living for a time in Beirut moved to Paris at the age of 22 where he studied Western classical music.
While there he translated classical poetry, such as the Sumerian
Epic of Gilgamesh, into French.

Dizziness

Dizziness

Let the rock fertilise to protect us from the fever of dizziness

Fix the moment into eternity

Freeze the wave that hurts us

Into the ogre's belly

If you truly are

The god of all seasons

A voice then will whisper:

"What use is it to throw a purple veil

Over this cursed vision"

My soul cried with pain

As cold and dead I walked

Across the markets of the city

While crowds were consumed by a ring of fire

How could I protect them from fire, from dizziness?

Dig more deeply, gravedigger

Dig the grave, dig

Khalil Hawi

(1919 – 1982)

One of Lebanon's best-known twentieth-century poets.

Born in Huwaya (Syria), Khalil Hawi grew up in Shwayr (Lebanon).

He studied philosophy and Arabic at the American University of Beirut, and he obtained a scholarship to enroll at Cambridge University, in England, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in 1959.

He then became a professor of Arabic literature at the American University in Beirut.

Within a few years, he established himself as one of the leading avant-garde poets in the Arab world.

His poetry relies heavily on symbols and metaphors and images, and it frequently has political and social overtones.

An Arab nationalist at heart, he repeatedly expressed his sense of shame and rage at the loss of Palestine in 1948 and at subsequent Arab defeats at the hands of Israel.

He lamented what he saw as the Arab world's political and cultural decay, and he expressed deep pessimism about the possibility of a true Arab cultural and political revival.

After 1975, Khalil Hawi experienced the desperation felt by all Lebanese who had to watch their country's slow descent into chaos, internal disintegration, and manipulation by outside powers.

He was outraged by Lebanon's inability to stand up to the Israeli army when the latter invaded on 3 June 1982, and he deeply resented the other Arab governments' silence about the Israeli invasion.

He committed suicide on 6 June 1982.

Struggle and Friendship

Struggle and Friendship

Enkidu thrust himself at Gilgamesh and they fought in the square.


He came up to Gilgamesh and they met.


Enkidu put out his foot to block the door to prevent him from entering.


They grappled each other, holding each other like bulls.


They broke the door posts and the wall.


They sported like bulls locked together.


They shattered the door posts and the walls shook. Gilgamesh bent his knee with his foot planted on the ground, and with a turn, Enkidu was thrown.


Then immediately his fury died.


When Enkidu was thrown, he said to Gilgamesh: "Yes, there is not another like you in the world, Ninsun who is as strong as a wild ox in the byre, was the mother who bore you.


And now you are raised above all men and Enlil has given you the kingship, for your strength surpasses the strength of men!"





They embraced each other and their friendship was sealed.


The eyes of Enkidu were full of tears.


He left sad at heart, weary, and he tortured himself.


His sorrow paralysed the muscles of his throat,


his arms hung down still and his strength had turned into weakness!

Epic of Gilgamesh

(2500 B.C.)

Certitude

Certitude

My reason is to lose all reason

My religion is indifference to religion

A simple answer is enough

After doubt, wine has borne my certitude

The day just broken is already done

Tomorrow is not yet here

Be happy today

Unceasingly fill your cup

And seize this

The sole chance of your existence

Although everything is born of ourselves

Yours and mine are

but two miserable lives

To be, is drunkenness and ecstasy

Tomorrow is the downfall of an age

Omar Khayyam

***

Omar Khayyam

(May 18, 1048 - December 4, 1122)

Was a Persian polymath: mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and above all poet.

As a poet, he is the most famous poet of the East in the West through various adaptations of his rather small number of quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

He has also become established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. Recognized as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times as reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He also contributed to calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus.

His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works have not received the same attention as have his scientific or poetic writings. Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have also testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Ibn Sina in Nayshapur where Khayyam lived most of his life, breathed his last, and was buried and where his mausoleum remains today a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every yea.