Last Night’s Vision

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!