Gheith Al-Amine: 11

A photograph of a photograph of Bernard Pivot (centre) at a family gathering in the 1980s. Source: Wikipedia

1. Late letter to Bernard Pivot

Back in the day,

three princes of the word

Mohammad Choukri, Charles Bukowski and Marc-Edouard Nabe

graced your show on three separate occasions.

 

Before a live audience, along with mediocrities

you collectively scorned and bullied Choukri,

whose magnificent retaliation framed your pettiness in a flash.

You disdained and pushed Bukowski out of your set

for legendarily being himself: a celestial drunk.

And with the help of half-witted guests you demonized the young and fresh Nabe

for being brilliantly talented, sharp-tongued, with tons of integrity.

 

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Conor Bracken Translates the late Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine: from “Scorpionic Sun”

Mars, Aries and Scorpio from the Wellcome Collection’s Persian Manuscript 373. Source: wellcomecollection.org

 

Gennevilliers

 

They got to know each other in Paris between two smoking faces which it was said were fired blanks. The machine guns launched black and yellow texts onto the café terraces. Ancestral huts and migraines crucified the gossiping sun of a late autumn in which convalescents were stretching out electrified limbs. One spoke adroitly about these rhymes bees of inconsistent blondeness. They weren’t listening or pretended not to hear. In their navel rooted the reign of a sphecoid wasp-star which itched throughout the discussion. They were anxious to go home however their legs had become the sole emblem of a museum of the nearby desert. They broke their ribs several times in the middle of the terrace. At a neighboring table the devil applied his makeup. At that very moment a tom-tom unleashed a drumbeat inside their stomachs and inexhaustible molecules. In their left lung Zodiac howled; and Time, whom one never meant to interrupt, plummeted incontinent and sat on their sentences, chewing them like birdshit. Time fled past the trashcans. Zodiac partied hard with long and bloody fireflies.

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Robin Moger Translates Sargon Boulus

Meeting with an Arab poet in exile

Cedars of Lebanon, American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Dept, Lebanon, 1900-20. Source: loc.gov

Cedars of Lebanon, American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Dept, Lebanon, 1900-20. Source: loc.gov

At that outcast and lonely hour,

that hour of night when choices narrow

until each absence takes on meaning as a cloud of smoke,

between the voices of the drunken patrons in that small restaurant

and the wash of the still sea that beats, below, against its rocky shore,

at that outcast hour of night, that lonely hour,

he talked to me of the legendary poets of exile

and how he’d known them in his youth, he

who still followed the same path,

and from an ancient notebook

which bore on its cover the cedar of Lebanon

began to read aloud his long two-columned poems.

.

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Imogen Lambert: They tweeted martyrdom with lattes

Tower of Babel

yrakhahipa 6

By Youssef Rakha

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined…

Night bites my shoulder. I turn to you, through a nylon window

To a state of limbo, there on a map

Under rivers of paper

We never drown, gazing on bridges

Night hugged my waist, like my mother, wailing

Where are our parents?

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