The pre-Islamic poet traces in the ruins an image of a departing beloved, to
whom it is his role to give form and life in poetry. To have this materialize
there should be a convincing endeavor, an engagement with obstacles
whereby courage and valor may be demonstrated. No tribal or communal
integration is possible without a quest. Al-Sayymb has a different quest, not
only in terms of difference between the pre-Islamic context of the desert
journey and residual, but mainly in terms of objectification, of giving voice
to every detail in order to bewail a condition and to summon change. Written
early in the 1950s and published in Al-Mdmb, 2(1954), 18, the poem was
looked upon as concomitantly engaged in revolutionary poetics while making
use of Middle Eastern fertility myths that were in vogue then.^27 Leaning on
Suzanne P. Stetkevych’s erudite reading of the use of rain, storm, and tears in
pre-Islamic poetry, TerrlDeYoung reached insightful conclusions regarding
the dichotomous rain-tears presence in the poem.^28 She also adds I.smn
‘Abbms’s early critique that drew attention to the symbolic design of the
hymn, its invocation of tradition to revolutionalize it through a poetic of
transference whereby the beloved of the traditional prelude is replaced by
homeland. The act of textual transference and poetic transposition is not new,
however, for it is available in abundance in the ancient, ‘Abbmsid, and
postclassical traditions.
Iraqi pain recaptured
Al-Sayymb’s strength lies elsewhere. His masterly use of patching and negoti-
ation between registers, Arabic and Western, attests to a poetic genius that
digests creatively to produce a poem that has the ring of tradition and moder-
nity, nostalgia and political consciousness, thought and music. The whole fits
into an eschatological vision that partakes of scriptural benedictions and
expresses the southern Iraqi sense of agony and pain. Although writing on
Buland al->aydarlas early as 1967, ‘Azlz al-Sayyid Jmsim’s words apply with
more force to al-Sayymb. He says: “Iraqi pain is real and old, it is the pain of
a country passing through series of periods, Babylonian, Sumerian, and
Acadian, and its forehead is smeared with the mud of submission. Instead of
changing into a David, a Spartacus, or a Greek hero, he resigns, accepting
oppressors’ alms, and when revolting he is only freed from the Ottoman
master to fall into the hands of the British master.” He adds: “From this Iraqi
poet’s background, where our sorrows multiply in the heart of this land, no
Iraqi poet emerges without passing through the cycle of pain.”^29 This home-
land for which the exile in Kuwait yearns recaptures in the poem traditional
erotic lore without losing sight of the dire reality. The poet was too realistic
to let the nostalgic mood override his political awareness of the life and
suffering of a wealthy country whose corrupt feudal system was sustained by
the colonizer. By invoking the naslbtradition, the poet engages the audience
in an associative register of longing and belonging. Drawing on nature
CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS