The following are translation of poems by the Omani poet Hilal Al Hajri (1968-) from his first collection titled: “Night Is Mine”, (Muscat: 2006):
Memoirs of Khalid Al Jlandaani(1)
Guevara
Guevara
I greet you thousands of times
O commando
Whose military cap still hangs
From a huge oak branch
In the forests of Bolivia
To fall on the mad skull
Of an upcoming rebel!
Rahma bin Jabir Al Jalhami (2)
I know
Once a prophet wore his military uniform
He shouldn’t take it off.
But
The moment you smashed your ship
On the rocks of swollen betrayals
There was
In the farthest place in the Gulf
A sailor collecting the wreckage of his ship
To tighten the circle anew.
Al Sheba (3)
All I recall is
Your shabby tatters
While you sneaked them away
Between barracks
Of phantom armies,
Looking
For a loaf of security
For a nation quivering since creation.
Abu Moslem Al Bahlaani(4)
The tribes of Yajooj and Majooj (5)
Have not yet penetrated the Barzakh (6)
I wonder:
Do you have estrangement enough
To fall together into a deep well
And then squat on the sword edge
Awaiting for calamity?!
The moment I crave for writing
Like I crave for death
Adulterous words and ideas escape from me!
Terrible it is to be poor
To own nothing but words.
Terrible it is to be
Between emptiness and nothingness.
Like ether,
What do I want and what not?
That’s the raw crab
My heart chews.
O Sibylla (7)
With breasts boarded
With letters and words
I’m the child who lacks the alphabet of talk
Yet in his heart
There’re twenty years of floods and doubts!
1 The protagonist of a novel called The Angels of Jabal Al Akhdhar by the Omani novelist Abdullah Mohammed Al Tai. The novel revolves around the Jabal Al Akdhar War (translator).
2 Al Jalhami (1757-1826) is a famous fighter from the Arabian Gulf. He fought British troops and was the head of Jalalhima from the Otub tribe (the translator).
3 Al Sheba is the nickname of Mohammed bin Abdullah al Salmi (1896-1985), a well-known Omani historian. He wrote important books on the political disturbances that Oman witnessed in the 20th century (translator)
4 Abu Moslem Naser bin Salim al Bahlaani al Rawahi (1860-1920) is a well-known Omani poet. He travelled to East Africa as a young man and settled there (translator).
5 Proper names that appear in the Quran refer to people known both for their great numbers and wickedness. They also appear in the Old Testament as Gog and Magog (the translator).
6 Barzakh is an Arabic word that means ‘screen’, ‘divider’, or ‘bar.’ As a concept alluded to both in the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet, it refers to the stage that separates this world from the world of the after-life (the translator.)
7 A Greek name that means ‘prophetess’ and ‘oracle’ (the translator.)
