(Ibid. 66–68). The poet looks for the surprising and the unfamiliar, the flowing
and the hidden beneath both hegemonic monopoly of discourse and mundane
pragmatism. The poem in his hands is a discovery of the lively and the vital,
among the marginalized, the insane, and the Sufis. The loving bond with the
language grows in correspondence with this association, which other poets
trace elsewhere.
In “Mawt al-mughannl” (The Death of the Singer), >amld Sa‘ld chooses
the absence of the ‘Abbmsid woman singer Fawz^45 to articulate his lamenta-
tions for the death of poets and poetry. As an eloquent elegy of the dearth of
the lyrical in poetry, the poem encapsulates time and space, tradition and
modernity, as it elegizes the poetic scene at large.
Fawz is absent...so why coming without her...
Why absent?
The singer is absent....
On his voice does Death lean, backbent,
His beard of tatters
His spectacles of wood^46
Do not laugh
Do not arouse his suspicions
Follow him to where the singer used to have his fires
Let him write at ease the last words
The last song in the will.
Do not wake Fawz up
Love tired her
These wrinkles...
the tune of absence which passed through her fingers
This whiteness in her braids....the tune of farewell that remains
between her lips
Do not awaken this agony...this irritable confidant
that joined me at many nights to her....
And joined her
Since light deserted her laugh
And mourned in her looks^47Sa‘ld’s poetics practices lyricism and argues for the poem as a lyrical space
that is no less rich in images and recollections. In a poem entitled “Bayt
Kmzim Jawmd” (Kmzim Jawmd’s house), Sa‘ld reenacts the late Iraqi poet
Kmzim Jawmd’s (d. 1985) voice through the latter’s clothes, papers, books,
notes, marginalia, and mannerisms as he used to describe life and poetry. The
late poet from the city of al-Naxiryyah in the South of Iraq is not subjected
to poetic retrieval, for the speaker knows him with an intimacy that allows
this dialogization. This reminiscence is worth citing, as Kmzim Jawmd argued
for a nationalist tradition against innovators while preoccupying himself with
POETIC DIALOGIZATION