Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

random intellectualizations. The poetic and the real have to negotiate a selfhood,
not only in matters of position, but also in the very poetic site. The poem
burgeons into a self that captures tradition and modernity within a nexus of
poetic dialogization. In his “A.ada ‘ashara kawkaban li-Msym” / “Eleven Stars
for Asia” (Nicosia 1984), the poet lets this selfhood unfold, not in a romantic
vein of lyricism, but in a controversial accentuation amid competing registers,
ancient and new:

Because you are bedazzled by

bows, howdahsand the forgotten tongues

of tribes who lean against the willow and weep

you have leant against the date palm of my soul

princes tumble

and panegyrics

the stony splendor of the thousand nights

another night and the silver boughs are completed

for the space reclining on my shoulders

another night and the Qahtani will gird on a sword

from the fuzzy spring-time

and lead the stallion of his lusts between

shepherd’s marble

to the resurgence of the flesh

temptation inclines to the north from this bareness

crowned by the moon’s dew,

the country seized by copper thunderbolt

and the horns of rams kohl-edged by history’s

perfumed dust

ring out in tumultuous turmoil: this is Asia.

because you come from technology’s eve

and all sorts of domestic creations

so you saw the Pleiades shimmer above the camel hump

and daggers drawn in lupine distrust

glittering like battle

you saw the sinful star of seduction flash in the utter

blackness of the eye of the veiled man

because you spring from the vapors of rivers

safe for sailing

texts of the body prepared for knowledge

and for oppressive touches

for you found in the shadow of a pair of ebony shoulders

the shadow of a continent drowning in sand and weapons

Asia, Asia,

sands and raised guns

tribes who butcher camels kneeling on bended knee

CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS