Youth

Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa

In ’57
we dug, with our black nails, trenches around Damascus.
The groves of Ghouta were as dense as the jungles of the Amazon.
From the top of Mount Hermon, water flowed white between fingers coated with dirt.
In ’57
we drank arak, a quarter carafe,
with a loaf of Arabic bread that cost a quarter lira.
In ’57
we fell in love,
wrote our first poems by candlelight.
It was a golden time, indeed.
It was 1957
and we, like Damascus,
were digging trenches in our souls.

Saadi Youssef (1934-2021) is considered one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arab world. He was born near Basra, Iraq. Following his experience as a political prisoner in Iraq, he has spent most of his life in exile, working as a teacher and literary journalist throughout North Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of over forty books of poetry. Youssef has also published two novels and a book of short stories, and several books of essay and memoir. Youssef, who spent the last two decades of his life in London, was a leading translator to Arabic of works by Walt Whitman, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Federic Garcia Lorca, among many others.

Khaled Mattawa is the William Wilhartz Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. His latest book of poems is Fugitive Atlas (Graywolf, 2020). A MacArthur Fellow, he is the current editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.

FROM Volume 70, Number 2

Issue 70.2, Spring 2021

Youth

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