Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

A rose in the gardens of Babylon,

A poet in the southern province of Buwayb,^41

My corpse under an Iraqi sun,

My dagger is on my image,

My image is on my dagger.

Whenever we turn away from the river, my friend,

The Mongol passes between us.^42

Poetry and exile exchange places and the poet let his voice create its own
homelands. Exile becomes then an imprint, a life that exists actively in long-
ing, love, wine, thought, dreams, and poetry: “Poetry is a place of exile / we
dream and forget where we were when we wake.”^43 The love that cannot be
disentangled, and the feeling and emotion that cannot be dislocated make the
state of exile as real as it is possible to be. It enforces itself with might to achieve
something impossible. The heart cannot be peaceful, nor can the mind:

Longing is a place of exile

And a place of exile is the history of this heart.

How many times have we told the fragrance of the place?

To be still so we rest and sleep?

How many times have we told the trees?

ofthe place to wipe off the invader’s mask

so we might find a place. Nowhere is the place

that distances its soul from its history.

A place of exile is the soul

That distances us from our land and takes us to our love.

A place of exile is the soul

that distances us from our soul and takes us to the stranger.

Is there a sword that has not yet been sheathed in our flesh?

To relinquish our dream, our brother-enemies

Have saddled the horses of the enemies that they may exit from our

dreams.

The past is a place of exile,

We tried to pick up the prunes of our exultance from that dead summer.

Thought is a place of exile:

We saw our future just behind our windows.

To reach it, we broke through the walls of our present,

In addition, it became a past in the shield of an ancient soldier.

Poetry is a place of exile.

We dream and forget where we were when we wake.

Do we deserve a gazelle?

As everything, especially poetry, gathers the signs of exile and intensifies the
sense of dislocation and loss, the speaker implores Qur’mnic messengers of the

ENVISIONING EXILE