The following are translations of poems by the Omani poet Hilal Al Hajri (1968-) from his first
collection titled: “Night Is Mine”, (Muscat: 2006):
1-
Headache
Last night’s vision
How can I deflower it this morning?
What were the mythical cats
Dancing in my head?
I recall glancing in my old solitude
At visions of voluptuous women.
And as I’m
From the “East” of legends and self-denial,
I only bewailed
Their bloody wounds in my heart
With words of wooing and images of despair.
But
What were those words whose
Splinters still fill my mouth?
Oh! I’ve just remembered
The details of the scene:
They were no women
I didn’t sing love songs
I
Was
Just
Immersed in Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat 1 !
2-
A Female Feast
This whole feast
Of women
How close to it is the friend
I know so well?
His age has bent
Dreaming
Of the vision of a woman
Or
The thigh of a chicken.
3-
Gloom
O I wish it would…
I wish it would…
No escape is there from loss.
When I cling to
A thread of certainty
The horses of anarchy
And their fascist carriages
Run over me
Leaving my days
Like a corpse
1 Omar Khayyam was a 12 th century Persian mathematician, astronomer and a poet. He wrote rhymed quatrains
called in Arabic and Persian rubaiyat. His poetry has been translated to several languages, including both Arabic
and English. Perhaps the most famous English translation is that of Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) (the translator).
Robbed by solitude and self-slashing.
The cup of bald Shakespeare
Is no longer enough
To drink my life’s vantage wine in,
The life that trots too much
With no reins of love
Or even a single glance of a damsel!
4-
Optimism
Who will help me
Make straight
My raw loneliness?
I’ve long since
Wanted to put wood on it
From the East and West.
Bitter it is
Bitter
If it were not
For the moments of absence
That clothe me at evening.
No…
Who says life is odious?!
Tell the world’s insects
To give me
The skins they discard in vain.
I may clasp them
If even for a moment!
