Selected Poem: Are You The One?
19 September, 2021
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the prominent Sudanese poets. He was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman, Khartoum State, where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. He is now living in London. His poetry has been translated into English by the Poetry Translation Centre.
Following is one of his poems translated from Arabic:
Are You the One?
I only notice
a woman who gets no notice
someone who follows my footsteps
I see myself
multiplied -
delving in images, drifting in memories
intuiting exodus
I am blind to boats enameled with light for show
Even when light graces the treetops,
their hearts are dark
I am elusive as perfume, a vagrant gust of wind,
and no one remembers me .......
A great souk
swallows the sound of a scythe
with a silence entrenched in its roots
Worms ignore a woman
who burns her history while she is born anew
Whoever lights up the past
sets the future ablaze
with a light that will neither burn boats nor taint hearts
Source: Poetry Translation Centre
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