Selected Poem: Love Card For Sarajevo
19 July, 2020
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Retired Police Major General Abdul Ghani Khalaf Allah Alrabi’ is a Sudanese writer and poet. He has published seven novels and three collections of poetry. His following poem has been written in 1993 during the Siege of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, by the Bosnian Serb army from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996. Thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed during the siege by the Serbs in ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Love Card for Sarajevo
Clouds birds and drops of rain depart,
Daringly in the face of danger
And sadly our inner being moves to your eyes in love,
Sleeping and dreaming of travelling.
A river bank is wet from the morning dew,
And another dresses your wounds
Kisses your dying face.
I’ve asked you die not, Sarajevo!
Do feelings and tender feelings die?
Do meanings die in all our notion?
O pretty beyond words!
Thirsty you are with eyes perplexed
Consumed you’re with deep wounds,
But, how can I come to you through the blockade,
To forbid you from the humiliation of begging?
I can behold you fed up with elder’s talk
And the prattle of the opulent people.
Sarajevo, Srebrenica and Korashidh,
A woe tearing apart the silenced-bound night.
I think I’ve not understood the last words,
Maybe they are the painful moments of labour
At noon.
Sarajevo, all that we need, you and I,
Is a boat at dawn?
Roaming on the blue water,
The severity of tragedy
You don’t look like your old sadness,
Nor your alleys would tell us about an ancient time
Snatched away by the wind of defeat,
About the secret of prattling and whispering
And the splendor in silence
In the chambers of the great civilizations and the divine messages
*** The poem has been translated from Arabic by Alsir Khidir and published in his book "Modern Sudanese Poetry, Anthology and Appraisal".
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SK/AS
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