Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

بدر شاكر السياب‎
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
(http://www.jehat.com/Jehaat/en/Poets/BaderShakir.htm)
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Străzi despre care se spune că nimeni nu mai revine pe ele, aşa cum nimeni nu mai revine de pe tărâmurile morţii:a Romanian rendering of a line from al-Sayyab - I read this line today, in a Romanian paper (Gândul), in an article written by Lelia Munteanu. Streets which is said nobody returns on them, as no one returns from the realms of death. Haunting memories, our own ghosts - or, by reverse, a haunting present, keeping us captives, no way to get back, to a past we were happy. For the poet, the place linked to the past is Jaykur, where he was born - an ambivalent place - a ghost, or by reverse, a desire, impossible to get to, but in our dreams:

Under the sun of the green east -
on the grey horse of a dream,
through Jaykur's bounteous summer
I rushed along distant roads,
between flowers, dew and water,
searching the horizon for a star,
a birthplace of the soul beneath the skies
for a spring to slake the flames of thirst,
searching for the exhausted traveler.

(al-Sayyab, Return to Jaykur)

al-Sayyab was one of the greatest poets in Arabic literature, whose experiments helped to change the course of modern Arabic poetry (wiki).

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