I searched pretty much for contemporary Arab poetry. Not always the result has been pleasing. This time I found it at lest interesting.
At this website I found a lot of egyptian literature. I enjoyed this poem of a young poet.
Rana al-Tonsi
A Rose for the Last Days
Rana al-Tonsi
On one foot
like a humiliated beggar I limp
past all the swinging doors
and the flags that are taken down from their masts . . .
The sidewalk was never my friend
but it embraced me those times
when the crying was tough and bitter
In my country
soldiers go to a war
where they never fight
In every coffeehouse or square
under the feet of the sick, the sad and insane
you can glimpse the trace of a rose
thrown into the arms of nurses
in lonely rooms inhabited by wailing,
a rose drawn in blood.
I cannot believe the car has yet to stop
that I fell out of it
like a scream
I know the lift attendant
never jumps off the fences
and that rocks keep wounding me
even though I’ve roamed for too long.
On one foot
death will come
and raise its head
Facing it, I will embrace this man strongly
and strangle all the poems in his hands
I will crush my bones under his hot breaths
My lungs are becoming two tubes
my feet like a battlefield
my heart a noose.
Am I really dead?
Only a while ago
I was smelling that homeland.
