Poesía árabe contemporánea: Arida, Aql, Haddad, Maluf

Poesía árabe contemporánea (Arida, Aql, Haddad, Maluf)

I. Nasib Arida – Cuartetos

Quatrains

I drank my glass in the presence of my soul

And I asked: Soul, what is it that you want?

Life is doubt and doubt is death:

Let us cover up our doubt with wine.

Our hopes shimmer and vanish

Like a mirage, yet all the while our burning thirst remains.

There is no harm in it. Life is nothing more

Than a day whose beginning is the end.

– – – 

II. Said Aql – En donde habita el ruiseñor

Where the Nightingale Dwells

Tomorrow, nightingale, when you sing

And the rocks are moved by the trills of your song

And the branch in its tree bends

To listen to you and the ears of corn arch their necks;

When you go, giddy, from hill

To hill, greeting them,

And they ask: “Where have you come from?” Say: “I came

From eyes whose beauty and charm

Cannot be surpassed.”

– – – 

III. Nadra Haddad – Embriaguez sin vino

Drunk without Wine

Gone is youth, and all its happiness,

And in its wake life remains bound in chains.

Withered in our gardens are its flowers

And the garden, without flowers, is a desert.

Our glasses are empty and to look at them

Is a bitter pain for those that sadness afflicts.

We have only the poetry that we pour,

Like wine, until the end of our lives.

Oh, you poor poets! How often you satisfied yourselves

With hunger! How often you got drunk without wine!

– – – 

IV. Shafiq Ma’luf – A mi hijo

To my Son

Do not wish for my poetry: your father’s

Poetry will not make you happy.

If you do not make yourself eternal

Then I cannot make you last forever.

But who can really say? Maybe

By your hand I will become eternal.