|
2005
- Saloni M presents The Shades of Love
Khalid
al-Hilli
Khalid al-Hilli was born in Hillah-Babylon,
in Iraq. He started publishing poems and articles in leading Arabic magazines,
such as Al-Adeeb and Al-Thaqafa in 1962. He worked for several
Iraqi newspapers and magazines before he eventually left Iraq in 1979.
He worked
as a correspondent for the Qatari Ar-Raya newspaper, whilst he
was in the United Arab Emirates between 1979 and 1982, and continued this
task when he lived in Morocco between 1982 and 1988. In Morocco, he also
worked as a cultural editor for Al-Mithaq al-Watani newspaper.
He moved
to Australia in 1989, working for a period as a correspondent to Al-Yaum,
a Saudi newspaper. Since then, he has continued to write for Arabic newspapers
in Australia and overseas. In the past few years he has lived between
London and Melbourne.
In 1964,
he published a book titled Two Colourless Eyes. It is a collection
of poems, thoughts and contemplations. In 1988, he published a poetry
collection titled Cloudy Cities, some of the poems from this collection
have been translated into English and published in Kalimat, an
international periodical of English and Arabic creative writing. He is
now a literary advisor for Kalimat.
|
|
Premonitions
Translated
by Raghid Nahhas
Contemplations
I stick on
the door the map of our planet as it revolves
Where
are you revolving now…
and where
do I revolve?
I look
for you everywhere,
but desolate
places are what I see.
I search
for you on all the roads of this earth
I see
nothing
I shred
all this planet’s maps
Then
I see my face revolving in the mirror.
There are five
continents on this planet
There
are seas where the blueness of your eyes
is nowhere
to be seen.
There
are countless mountains
There
are women increasing in number now
…and
decreasing
There
are billions whose
daily
agenda is unknown to me
I know
all of that, but
I have
not seen a bit of your face
on the
maps of this planet.
Do I see your
face in the night’s dreams?
Come
closer now, for I don’t know
what
will become of my heartaches tomorrow.
Or how
they would be if I were a prophet
on one
of the five continents.
Come
closer so I reveal my sorrows to you
in my
day-dreaming.
Transformations
I will come
to you like walking sand
or a
phantasm running towards you
bewitched…
or dead… or paralysed…
or flying
with the wind…
I alone
ask about you in the streets
I search
in the forests
I dream
in the taverns
Would you come
to me a silence…
to dwell
in my eyes and dream?
Efficacies
Wars hide in
our memories
and the
imaginary rain becomes trees of tears
How then
could the desperate write his face?
How could
the day witness its disturbed elements?
How could
you spend your long hours
without
me being the night and day?
Unknown seasons
search space
for islands
flying with the wind
In your
madness
you are
an illusionary child...
screaming
|
© Khalid
al-Hilli 2005. Translation by Raghid Nahhas.
back
to index of artists/performers 2005 - Saloni M presents The Shades of
Love page
|
