Quatrains: Poetry from Iraq ~ رباعيات شعر من العراق

بالرغم من أنَّ القصائد قد نُشِرَت في الكتاب أصلاً باللّغة الإنجليزية فقد استطاع المؤلّف في هذه الرّباعيّات تطبيق القافية والموسيقى الّتي يتميّز بها الشّعر العربيّ.  بعض هذي الرّباعيّات جاء مستقلّاً بعنوانه بينما تشكّل رباعيّات أخرى أجزاء من قصيدة

يحتوي الديوان على قصائد تعبّر عن تجربة خسارة الوطن والبيت، عن اليأس، عن الأمل في استعادة كرامة سلبها الاحتلال -وهذه حزينة وملهمة بطبيعتها- بينما هناك قصائد أخرى تتناول الحبّ والعاطفة تنتهي أحياناً بحكمة وأخرى بابتسامة مقفّاة. يعبّرالدّيوان عن صوت متميّز لأستاذ جامعيّ تخصّص في  العلوم ومارس الكتابة في الغربة

علي الزعاك

Ali Al-Zaak

Though the poems are written originally in English, in this book the author successfully and with great care transfers the beautiful Arabic rhythm, rhyme, and musicality to English quatrains. Many quatrains comprise entire poems, while others are part of a larger structure. Some are about the experience of losing country and home, despair, hope, and attempts to retain shreds of dignity. These are stirring and sad. Many others are love poems where the verses turn words of wisdom. There are even jokes transformed into rhyming verses. All are channelled through the unique voice of an exiled Poet.

Refugee 
 
Through checkpoints, he passed with a bag  
Stopped and searched, but there was a flag
It will cover me when in need and no shed   
A part of the heart symbol of a home he said 
 
Across the borders caught pleading for pass 
The flag spread over the newly mown grass
Will it cover him with a passport in his right? 
Chewed on that for no embassy within sight
 
Sank in the shadow reading what he wrote  
Turned around and risen then finally fought     
Trying to maintain respect for a heart in run
Missing the year when brightly lit by the sun 
 
He couldn't rest years on his borrowed time
His face turned yellow as if it is a dried lime 
Wounded and defeated by the battle' curse
Putting him in custody under an aging nurse 
 
In pantomime, acting reads racing thoughts
To add to the painting on the tattered coats
He has seen the horror in his land grows
As in Picasso*Guernica arranged in rows
 
In the scene where he witnessed women
Fall from a gored horse in a grayish lumen 
Dismemberment child grieved by flames
As the class of terror and more in names
 
In a Cubist movement, it is all streak talk  
The bleeding of the land breaks the clock
Trying to trace the trails and curtail fight
Knows stopped watch it twice a day right
 
Eventually concluded it was a hollow ride
Agony with the cavernous hole in his side
Couldn't track him to the camps in shake 
Following a one thousand and one mistake 

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* Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" named after the Spanish town bombed and destroyed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists in 1937.

*The poetry book can be obtained from Amazon, Amazon kindle, 2020

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