Abdelwahhab Azzawi

 
ABDELWAHHAB AZZAWI: THREE POEMS
– Translated from the Arabic by the author

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CRYING

 

Alone in my bed
I hear a crying behind my back
No…
It’s me
Yes, it’s me who is crying
And dreaming of a hand
Waving to him
In the wall.

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TRAINING

 

The cup of tea groans
from a sudden cool in the lips

The eyes are steady
the neck is leaned
and the heart is full
while the old talks run in the room

He was not a dead…
He was an alive training to be dead
like the flower on the table

Behind the window
the voices of the war rise
and the clouds fall into the sea of regret
and the drowning sailors
search for a summer and gulls
in the grassed chambers of the ships

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THE LEAF

 

The shabby leaf
is swung by the wind.

The dry leaf
on an ancient tree
is a peforated eye
a rusty bullet
a pale icon for a prophet
who misses his childhood.

The light drops off its borders
just like the sounds of those who passed
and melts away.

The hanged leaf
swings
falls
then, the world explodes.

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ABDELWAHHAB AZZAWI is a Syrian poet born in 1981. He is an ophthalmologist. He publishes regularly in Syrian literary journals. His first book, Randomised Grief, was published in 2006.