Mustafa Abdulmalek Al-Sumaidi, poetic cycle (Prepared for publication by Angela Kosta)
Moderator 
YOUR BREATHTAKING RADIANCE
And there, amidst the blossoms, you were,
while the dewy ground was painting its tableaus
beautifully with the feather of your multi-hued treads,
bestowing upon the flowering
all that appeared of your other colors—
a charming beauty harboring mysteries.
And you trod lightly upon the soil as Spring,
if not a piece of Paradise itself,
that God willed to suddenly descend
within the dense grove of May.
And I beheld your radiance
bereaving the blossoms of their breath—
blossoms bowing their heads in bashful grace
before your Majesty—sublimely brighter
than the splendor of March.
And there I stood, astounded,
engrossed in a reverberating question:
"Are you the Goddess Flora?"
And I whispered to myself:
What once I beheld in the distant horizon—
the rainbow in the almanac of days gone by,
here now has come, a revelation drawn
from the archive of the rains.
And dewdrops I beheld,
brushing against your dress,
pleated with shifting phases:
A phase through which a light brilliantly unfolded,
to glisten like stars keeping vigil over the deep;
and another—for the butterflies at play,
mending the buttons.
And there wafted your sweetest fragrance;
its scent intoxicated me for an age yet to come.
And when your moment of egress fell,
I wept: "If only the blossoms
could rear high walls!"
I WAS MY OWN WAITING
Here, from the courtyard, is emerging
the poem I have been searching for
in the evenings,
trembling from December's cold,
seeking warmth
to ward off dissonance.
It gropes its way
through mist's veils,
as if shaping from its layers
my blank sheets.
It hums to the rustle
of bitter shrubs and tamarisk leaves,
and something of the winds blowing
to carry it to the edges of my balcony.
Here, upon the windowpane,
I stretch out my hand to compose
its own verses with dewdrops,
knowing that dew betrays no meaning
when the heart pens it before fingers
in a translucent script:
You were too late,
and I was my own waiting.
Your absence stretched across life,
becoming a fleeting homeland
for a grave like mine.
How, then, can I pour the cold into words,
teach dissonance to become a melody
whose echo bleeds with death-rattles?
I will tell you that
I made peace with silence
for awaited warmth,
when the tempest was
the prevailing language.
And now, here I am
harnessing words,
reaching the final line,
engrossed in stupefaction
that you have preceded me,
and written me in your own way
through absence.
THE TICKING OF DEATH
Tomorrow you will not be the one
who bestrode the world like a Colossus,
the predator you thought yourself to be
in a world once yours,
becomes merely a deferred biological feast,
in a plot of land measured to your body.
The dust will show no favour,
whether you were an emperor,
or a mere non-entity,
rather, to it you shall return, return—
just as you were first molded.
Your grandeur is spurious... ephemeral,
your self-idol, sanctified by your vain desires,
will crumble before the might of your last agony,
You will see the sun of your lungs sink into dusk,
to firmly believe your hubris will rise no more;
the terminal bubris—a solemn funeral...
so solemn, had you been a masterful hypocrite,
but if your folly was too crude for such art,
you will be consigned to the grave in haste
In both cases, you are a tasteless joke
that dust narrates to itself
within a fresh grave.
Parade your shadow no longer;
one day, you'll heed death's steady tick,
as it unfastens the buttons of your fleshy shirt
to liberate the soul from your world's cage—
the very world by which you were beguiled.
Then you'll be rammed into a narrowed grave,
taught by the clay how you must bow,
so think not so, O Man
that marble will immortalize your name,
or the gold you hoarded will bring you grace
Far-fetched...
Neither shall you be immortalized,
nor the hubris you raised
with untruth endures.
THE SWEETEST OF THE POEMS
In a deliberate journey,
I took my way to her through fourfold seasons,
hoping I might find her awaiting me:
The sweetest of the poems.
I traversed Spring,
lingering long in outset contemplations,
though it revealed not to me
even a bud of its opening verse.
I attempted again,
touching it more than I should,
but its hand bore not her fragrance,
despite the diversity of flowers.
"Perhaps in the thunder's roar, she will burst,
Or within showers of hail she takes shape,"
I said it, as Summer stretched vast before me
pouring down without her sent-down grace.
She was not there,
even in a droplet beaded on a leaf
caressed by a slight breeze
before it fades to nothing.
"Maybe from a stark, lifeless void,
she will emerge in a season yet to be,"
I beguiled myself with such wishful thinking,
oblivious to how Winter speaks to me of itself:
in the nakedness of trees,
in the pallid face of the earth
in the hue-lacking wasteland.
I pursued the last of all seasons,
sifting through withered leaves
beneath the shadow of dusk,
I whispered to me:
"I shall not bring my journey to an end
until I reach its opening verse."
Then, after awhile, I turned my sight skyward,
meditating upon Almighty's vast dominion
amid a long night of sleepless stars,
and thus she descended
in full-harmonious symmetry:
The sweetest of the poems.
Mustafa Abdulmalek Al-Sumaidi| Yemen
Përgatiti për botim Angela Kosta
