Syrian Poetry
Since President Bush wants to add Syria to the embargo list, I thought that today I would add this section of Syrian poet Ghada al-Samman's poem The Lover of Blue Writing above the Sea ( this is the second section of the poem):
Who will lead me to a city that is a stranger to bombs,
that I might live there?
Who will lead me to fields, stranger to furtive burials
of a murdered man tortured to death?
Who will lead me to trees
that have never heard a woman moaning for her hijacked lover?
Who will lead me to a sky
whose blue is a stranger to injustice or harshness
or a thought that has been raped?
I am tired of your love, your time,
of men like you who compete in violence...
Their love is blue writing above the sea...
Who said: the love of men is not like water through a sieve?
translated by Saad Ahmed and Miriam Cooke
from The Poetry of Arab Women - A Contemporary Anthology, edited by Nathalie Handal, Interlink Books
