Raed Aljishi
I am the foaming foam as it evaporates.
Raed Anis Al-Jishi, Genesis of Memory. The Impact of the Arab Spring, Poems, Edizioni il Cuscino di Stelle 2021, translated from French by Claudia Piccinno, French version curated by Abdelmajid Youcef, Preface by Emanuele Aloisi
The verse in the title of this review closes the poem Resignation Before the Majesty of the Waves, from which I also quote the following scattered lines:
“The foam unites me in passion.
When we are one, I become the blossoming of space.
(…)
I seduce the melody of poetry on the shores,
I spit the coffee into the pot of desire.
(…)
Diffuse and vast, I did not oppose
the crossing of my heart
(…)
because in the majesty of poetry,
the shedding of blood is chastity,
prayer is blood.” (pp. 65-66).
Let’s also consider this passage from Another Doll (p. 61):
“A bit of dust climbed up the legs of the chair
in the body of winter around the curve of the road.
// It evolves like a fig’s sob that endorses its
nudity, embraces the life of the splendid moonlight.”
As can be seen from these few examples, Raed's style is imaginative. It teems with metaphors and symbols. The carnal reflects the spiritual and vice versa. It is not easy to “navigate” this book unless one has cultural references to the Arab way of writing poetry and the “kennings” that populate that literature, especially in poetry and even more so in Sufi poetry. However, some images are so powerful that they capture our attention and are accessible enough to our interpretation, especially if we can draw parallels to biblical references or archetypal figures found in every culture. After all, Raed asks and asks us: “But what would life be without this imagery?” (p. 60).
Since the falcon is also present in my Imperfect Symmetry, I was immediately drawn to the poem Final Act (pp. 54-56), which also references a Christian symbol such as the cross. I quote sporadically again:
“On the theater of time, crucified on the cross of my tongue
I watch the raptors dive into my song,
(…)
What could meaning hide from me, when the beats of its rhythm
are insistent in the spirit of rhyme?
(…)
This heart, I carried it with my bent back united
to my cross and to my songs.
(…)
Two raptors fly over me: my understanding and my faith.”
In Unique on His Path (pp. 48-50), we find a kind of confession in verse:
“I don’t even know how to soar far
from the noise of the tongue.
(…)
Three keys
reside in my heart.
Three keys I stole from the old locks of hell.
The fourth I left in the left ventricle.
In the wind,
no destination.
(…)
the embers of the tale encrusted with poetry, beautiful sounds to cross…
Never distract me from the path I have chosen
even if I only partially know it.
It doesn’t matter.”
In Mary of the Nile (pp. 45-47), we find a sort of Marian hymn:
“Your niche is the house of the universe.
(…)
If you were the only one worthy of this.
You are the only one worthy of carrying a fetus
that does not come from the loins of prostrate
males.
It was. It is! He is.
He is where everything else is nothing.”
In Debris to the Rhythm of the Soul (pp. 41-42, where the poem also unfolds over more than one page), we read:
“My poetry from which
the hemorrhage of the universe
is born,
chose me as its favorite;
it unfolds through explosion
in the juice of the musical scale.”
In Duel of Love and Death (p. 40):
“I can love
I can die as she wishes.”
The Secret of the Eyewitness (p. 39), which refers to the story of the prophet Jonah, jealous of the conversion of the Ninevites to whom he had been sent, reluctantly, so that they might repent, opens with this marvelous couplet:
“In your eyes, a little great secret,
the universe would wither if they vanished.”
From Nader of My Heart (pp. 24-26),
I extract these splendid snapshots:
“your alphabet was silence
and a smile.
// In your pupils
a heap of cultures
wrapped in invocation
like a revelation.
(…)
So when we met,
you occupied all the space
and left my heart to wander.”
The entire collection is rich with stimulating and mysterious suggestions. It is no coincidence that it opens with this epigraph:
“If the fall had been ascension,
how would I have oriented my gaze?”
Source: Farapoesia
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