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Wadih Saadeh
Selected poems by Wadih Saadeh

Wadih Saadeh 

Selected Poems

Translated by Huda Fakhreddine

THE DAILY WORK

Hey you!

Come.

We will do nothing today.

The sun is boring and the rain monotonous,

and I have no patience, not even for my hat.

Hey you!

Don’t say you’re in a rush

and surely on point like a bullet.

You’ll lose nothing if you cancel the whole trip.

You can give up on God

and talk to me.

Do you have to learn all the words

only to say

goodbye to friends?

Help me out a little.

Let me lie on this sidewalk

and block passage to that spot over there.

Just help me out a little

so that the air may pass through.

I THINK THE FAN IS TURNING, ALLEN GINSBERG

Listen, Allen,

I’m on the sidewalk, my tobacco has run out.

I open my eyes and close them,

and sometimes I remember that night when we wiped saliva from the mouths of the dead

then descended the ladder together

and walked along the shore.

The fan is turning now.

I like to think that the air is a gentle swallow while I lean on the corner watching my knee go numb.

The fan is now turning in my head, Allen,

and my mouth which resembles a newsstand

is silent.

Inside it are some teeth, dead like animals.

It happened that

I discovered patience under a tree

one day,

and I spoke of the soul in a simple carriage,

as we passed along the river.

The smoke, Allen,

the smoke and beautiful beats!

On the other side of the beach,

the sand stands alone.

Sometimes the fish throw it a rock

to sit on.

Is this a fitting scene?

In my hand is a murdered day

and I want to bury it silently.

From The Seat of a Passenger who Left the Bus (1987)

MY MOTHER

She gave the last drop of water in her pail to the basil

and slept next to it.

The moon passed, the sun came,

and she slept on.

Those who used to hear her calling them in the mornings

to a cup of coffee,

didn’t hear her voice.

They called to her from their balconies. They called to her in the fields.

They didn’t hear her voice.

When they came,

a drop of water was still oozing from her hand,

creeping towards the basil.

From Because of Cloud Most Likely (1992)

___________________________

More poems are published in Banipal 67 – Elias Khoury, The Novelist

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