stagnation and sluggish thought. Other poems like “Intizmr” (Awaiting) and
“Wa.shah” (Loneliness) are no less sensitive to issues of dislocation. His
collection Ashcmr flal-manfm(Poems in Exile 1957) is also distinguished
by the presence throughout of a speaker, a wanderer and a stranger, who is
alienated by circumstance, roaming in “city streets of closed gates,” asking
people who are on their way to lands of freedom to pray for him. He requests
them to do so, for he is in a “distant homeland / followed by wolves / traversing
black plains and highlands,” he says in a poem dedicated to Hind.^90 While
his poem “Ilm Hind” (To Hind) in his 1965 collection Sifr al-fuqr wa
al-thawrah(The Book of Poverty and Revolution) internalizes al-Sayymb’s
erotic prelude in “Inshndat al-mayar” (Canticle of the Rain) and addresses
the woman as homeland,^91 the female in “Ghiymb: IlmHind” in his 1957
collection (Poems in Exile) is addressed as a woman whose prayers are needed
by the forlorn exile. He is left out, ever forgotten by speeding people
and trains, a stand which is to become quite conspicuous in his later
collections, especially in his poem “Amymr” (Rains) in Kalimmt lmtamnt
(Undying Words 1960). In “Qaxm’id min Vienna” (Poems from Vienna) in the
same collection, he is a solitary person, “Celebrating his birthday tonight /
He was a stranger.”^92 His loneliness is like a drop of rain, solitary, with no
connections whatsoever.^93 As for his longing, it is like a singing skylark that
has settled in a prisoner’s mind. Although musing on antecedent authority,
like AbnFirms al->amdmnl’s (d. 357/968) poem in prison, the speaker nego-
tiates other texts without full abandonment of the self. Such is al-Baymtl’s
“Tidhkmr min Baghdmd” (Souvenir from Baghdad 1958), which is typical of
al-Baymtl’s early poems of exile before he managed to bypass the wound
of memory (1: 381).
In comparison, the speaker in Ashcmr flal-manfm(Poems in Exile 1957) is
more baffled than ever by an unease, which is displaced into the exilic—be it
lands, outlooks, or texts. This collection has a great deal of uncertainty and
hesitation, as the speaker has not finalized a position so far regarding
ideological views and concerns. At this intersection, the speaker strives to
leave behind the Eliotic practice that characterized his earlier collections. Yet
he simultaneously recognizes that Marxist or nationalist commitments
may end up in rhetorical practices that lead his writing into the prosaic,
rather than the poetic. Even mythology, which has been drawing the atten-
tion of his generation since then, suffers further selection and appropriation
in an age that has been increasingly on the alert for historical images and
cultural directions of wide-ranging implications. In this exilic domain,
however, he courts and juxtaposes images, symbols, signs, windmills, black
moons, and sham warriors, against lakes and plains of frustration and failure.
In “Al-Mlihah wa al-manfm” (Gods and Exile) in Ashcmr flal-manfm(Poems
in Exile), al-Baymtldepicts his exemplary alien poet, the wanderer and
the stranger, who is there to offer sacrifice with no possibility of redemption
or success.
ENVISIONING EXILE